Savoring Pain

 Well it's two in the morning right now... 

One of the downsides to having a brachial plexus injury/ paralyzed arm is the pain. In the past couple years I've learned a lot about pain. 

Lately it's been doing alright but there's some nights, or mornings like this, where the usual pain meds and compression sleeve and glove seem to do nothing and I can't sleep.    

So come to think of it, I've been daily dealing with fairly constant pain since December of 2018. 

I can't relate to everyone's pain. Mine has been less than some and more than others. So I will speak only of my thoughts, and experiences of my own pain.  

I am familiar with pain, both physical and emotional. 

I was hit by a car.

My used-to-be dominant arm is paralyzed, with a rarer injury, the kind that only come from "accidents".

I had a concussion. 

I have sixteen scars from the ordeal. Only one of those scars came directly from the car, the other fifteen came from surgery.

I've had three surgeries.

I've had constant nerve pain pretty much since after I was hit. That's over two years of a constant burning tingling hand. But you know what really hurts? When my left hand falls asleep. It feels very similar to the pain in my right hand, but the difference is after a few minutes of wiggling my left hand will be fine. I can't do that with the right one.

My pain used to be much worse. The nights were more frequent that I could not sleep. There were times when it hurt to eat or do things with my left hand. When I could get to sleep most often I had been squeezing something tightly in my left fist to distract from the pain, and when I woke up it hurt to unclench my fist. I had to run water as hot as I could stand over it to get it to relax so I could move it properly. Then for a long time I had a small machine that I would use at night so I could get to sleep. The pain in my right hand was so bad, I had to have a machine that would send electronic pulses down my arm to distract the nerves that were firing and causing the pain. Fortunately the pain is not near that bad anymore. 

I take pain medicines a couple times daily, wear a compression glove and sleeve at night, and on some nights like tonight, that's still not enough. 

And that's just the physical pain! 

We have moved around a ton, which comes with its own mountains of pain. 

My physical pain tolerance has grown a lot, but emotional pain still feels at least ten times worse to me. I would choose to deal with that whole list up there much faster than I would willingly deal with all the emotional pain of moving and countless goodbyes that I've had to deal with already in my life. 

Though it may sound like a nightmare, here's why it's not. My favorite part of Ephesians 2:4. "But God" He changes everything. I cannot fathom what my journey so far would have been like without Him. Because I know that He is always with me, (Matthew 28:20), I have not been hopelessly engulfed in my pain, because I'm not going through this alone. During no single step of this journey am I alone. Every piece of it He is holding my hand and giving me the strength, hope, and reassurance to keep going. I do not need to despair in the hard pain because there is no second of it that is outside of God's plan. He is in control. I do not even need to think for a moment that I am just being thoughtlessly toyed with by fate. God is in control. His plans for me are good. (Jerimiah 29:11) He was not surprised when I was hit. He was there protecting my sister and I from what He did not want to allow to happen to us. He has a purpose for ALL of the pain.

I was looking back at some of my journal entries from last year, and one that I wrote one pain filled sleepless night, much like this one, was about savoring pain.

Friday 24^th July. 12:44 AM 2020

I’m sitting here in bed, trying to savor the feeling of pain pulsing around my hand scar and mid lower arm. 

How does one savor pain? Soak it all up to remember, to prevent being ungrateful. 

I don’t want to forget, to immediately take for granted having full function again. 

I want to remember those first weeks, the nights where I was sobbing and tossing and turning in pain, finally falling to sleep clutching something, almost anything so tight my hand always hurt in the morning, I had to run the water as warm as my left hand could bear so as to ease the muscle pain, I don’t want to forget what it was like to have major surgery, so when I woke up I couldn’t move because I was in that much pain. I don’t want to forget what it was like to scrape the last of the blood off my nose right before Christmas. I don’t want to forget what it was like to have to lean on 3 nurses to get to a bathroom. I don’t want to forget what it was like not to eat as much because it triggered, it hurt to eat. I don’t want to forget what it’s like to practice walking all over again. I don’t want to forget concussion symptoms, I don’t want to forget what it's like to have to take a nap on my 16^th birthday. I don’t want to forget all the pain, all the struggle, and all the limitations. No zip lining, no playing ultimate frisbee, people asking too often if I need help, the terrifying feeling of falling, not being able to do hair, spreading PB is really hard, early on people slapping my shoulder and it really hurt. I don’t want to forget what it’s like to know that in an instant your family has your back. I don’t want to forget what it’s like to have over a couple hundred people praying for me. I don’t want to forget about people in the grocery store telling me that they’ll be praying for me. I don’t want to forget anything that God has done in my life. He allowed me to be hit by a car and I am eternally grateful. People may say, oh you’ve suffered! No. I haven’t. I’ve gone through pain not anguish. “Count it all joy.”

2 Corinthians 4:7-9 “But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us. We are hard-pressed on every side, yet not crushed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted but not forsaken; struck down but not destroyed.”

I love these verses as they accurately describe how I feel. If I had been without God in all this, for one I’d be dead, two I can’t even begin to imagine how I would have suffered. God carried me through it all! That’s why I can say that I have not suffered. He caught my head when I was hit, He was my Protector at my right hand as so many Psalms say. He protected my right hand. It was supposed to be so much worse. He was with me throughout all of my concussion, He made sure my sense of humor stayed intact through it all. He was with me on the plane when we had no regular motion sickness medicine. He was with me at Christmas time in America as it is so easy to get overwhelmed. He was with me in the late nights when the pain wouldn’t stop. He was with me when there was almost no pain meds that would work, when I would be on the highest dosages several times a day just to get by. He was with me when it hurt to eat, when it hurt to do almost anything. He was with me when I was sweating like crazy in the middle of winter because of the pain. He was with me before, during, and after each surgery. He was with me when school was tough. He was with me when I was so homesick. He was there every time that I cried out to Him and all the times in between. He was with me, and is with me.

My favorite verse Matthew 28:20 “And behold I Am with you Always, even to the end of the age.”

When the pain is hard, when I can’t sleep (like right now), when school is hard, when I’m afraid, when I continue to go through culture shock because America is so weird, when I’m so homesick that it tears at my heart and hurts worse than my hand ever did, even when I’m unfaithful and my focus goes off of God on to things “that might help my heart faster” like ice cream, tv, and thinking that I know better than God. He’s still here.

2 Timothy 2:11-13 “This is a faithful saying: For if we died with Him, we shall also live with Him. If we endure, we shall also reign with Him. If we deny Him, He will also deny us. If we are faithless, He remains faithful. He cannot deny Himself.”

I cannot say that I have suffered when God has carried me EVERY SINGLE step of the way, I have been blessed. I have learned so much including the value in having negative opinions being proven wrong.

That was my perspective then, and it still is my perspective now. 

Without this pain that God has allowed I would not have come to this point. I would not have come this far. God has used this pain to grow me. So I will savor this pain that He has allowed me to have for this season. This pain will not last forever, so I must savor it now, while it lasts so that I can look back later and remember how far God has brought me and that He is with me in every journey. Past, present, and future. Always. 

Well, I'll see if I can get some sleep now that its nearly 4 AM.  :)