The Persistence of Pain

The Persistence of Pain
1/27/2021 11:24:00 AM by: Susan Lyttek

Yesterday as I was working on other things, I kept wondering what on earth I would write today’s blog post on.

Then I woke up in the wee hours in a full-blown attack of fibromyalgia.

Anyone who knows me well knows that I have dealt with that annoyance for over twenty years. Most of the time it is a dull roar. If I keep moving on a daily basis, if I limit caffeine to the mornings, and I stretch regularly, the pain is completely manageable. I am never pain-free, a fact which shocks my father every time I say it, but it’s livable.

Then we get the days like today. The days where everything hurts so bad, I can barely move. And when I move, a whole new wave of pains hit and make me grimace with the force of them.

I have written on pain before in this blog because I know that everyone has some sort of pain. It may not be physical pain. It could be emotional, spiritual, relational, mental or a variety of other words ending in ‘al’. But we live in a fallen world. Pain is part of the original curse. Genesis 3:17 says, “To Adam he said, ‘Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, “You must not eat from it,” ‘Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life.’”

In the NIV version, there are over 60 references that include the word ‘pain’. If you look through them, sometimes the pain is simply part of the original curse. But sometimes it is caused by others and sometimes, if we are willing to admit it, we cause ourselves the worst of the pains we endure.

Because if you go beyond the word ‘pain’ and look to the idea of pain, it is simply the price of being separated from God and his will. And as much as I would like to be fully in the will of God, I know that I take a thousand little steps away from it on a regular basis. For instance, if I worry about anything, it pierces me with many little pains, stealing joy from the moment. Who has the ability to stop me from worrying? Only me. Or if I overeat or eat things that I know disagree with me (whether allergies or sensitivities), it hurts my digestive track until the offense ‘passes’. Who can I blame on eating what should not be eaten? Only me.

Did I do anything to give myself fibro in the first place? I don’t think so. But doctors don’t know what causes it so it could be the result of years of bad choices. Or it could be simply a byproduct of living in a fallen world.

Even if you are the best person (other than Jesus) who ever lived and you treat your body well and try to live honorably, pain will come your way. Solomon, the wisest man ever, said, “All their days their work is grief and pain; even at night their minds do not rest. This too is meaningless.” In this quote, “their” refers to people who live under the sun or on this world of ours.

In fact, if there’s anything this past year has taught us, it’s that pain rains down on the good and the evil. It comes to those who live for themselves and those who live for God. Pain will be our companion until God creates the new heavens and the new earth at the end of time. Nothing we can do will eliminate its presence from our lives.

Because I’ve had shingles twice, on the same nerve, that nerve is sensitive. If I start to get overly stressed, I can feel it twinge, like my own personal warning system.

I like to think of pain in the same way. It is our warning system that things are not right either within us or around us. It reminds us to pray and to depend on God. Only then, does the presence of pain in our lives become manageable.

“I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” John 16:33

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