The Promise in Pain

I often have asked myself about my personal tolerance for pain? Am I a tough person? I have wondered if when push came to shove what my threshold of pain would be, at what point would I break?

I come from a long line of pain tolerant women. Women who really knew not only physical pain, but also emotional, and spiritual pain of the worst kind. So, I am perplexed by the notion of what it would take to stare pain directly in the eye until it subsides. How does one hold her ground? Keep her feet from slipping, and move forward when her body rejections any notion other than curling into a fetal position?

I have been faced with relative aches and pain over the years but nothing like I am now facing. Over the past couple of weeks my body has turned on itself and me. Thus, offering me the opportunity to examine this concept of pain to the fullest of its breadth.

Sitting alone for 7 hours in a dark, cold, hospital room with no phone, no t.v., and experiencing the worst pain in my life including the birth of four children, things have a way of becoming really basic, really quickly. I was alone with my pain. The i.v. medications were not working, the doctors did not know what was happening to me, and I felt completely depleted. Nobody could stop this for me, I had to breathe through it just as I had been breathing for 7 days prior to ending up in that hospital room. I was alone with my pain and the fear I was edging closer and closer to the threshold where I could no longer take it began to grip me. I was tethered to my bed by an i.v. and out of reach of a button to summon the nurses help. I was trapped, angry, and in pain.

It was in these frantic moments I was completely stripped bare and began to understand for the first time that my tolerance of pain was irrelevant. My complete and utter dependence on the only living, breathing God to help me draw breath in the midst of that pain, on the other hand....was of the utmost relevance. I came to find I was not alone at all in that stark room. In fact, I believe for the first time in my life I was in perfect communion with the one who knows me best.

It has been four days since my pain piqued in the emergency room, and I would love to proclaim a miraculous healing. That is not my testimony of pain. Mine is a testimony of a pain that continues to linger, but also one of a Helper that makes it impossible not to count myself fortunate to have experienced His unmistakable presence amidst my pain.

I've also have begun to let go of my preoccupation with strength. I am beginning to see my grandmothers not as supernatural beings that stared pain down and came out victorious, but rather as woman who knew what to cling to when life's storms hit. I can envision them holding their lifeless babies in their earthly arms, while being held collectively by heavenly arms that helped them each take the next breath amidst her pain.

I am so grateful that God has shown me this truth through physical pain rather than through the unimaginable loss my grandmothers faced. I pray to God that I may never experience that particular pain, but I am more confident now that if that day were to come for me; that not mine, but OUR pain tolerance would be sufficient for a purpose that I don't have to understand. I am able to accept that now, as much as I want my pain to back down, I am able to give up on the notion of my own personal resistance to pain. But together, with my Creator, I am finding that we have yet to find the limit of what we are able to tolerate. Something in me thinks WE probably NEVER will.

"PAIN removes the veil; it plants the flag of truth within the fortress of a rebel soul." --The Problem of Pain---C.S. Lewis


God Hath Not Promised


"God hath not promised skies always blue
Flower strewn pathways, all our lives through;
God hath not promised sun without rain,
Joy without sorrow, peace without pain.

But God hath promised strength for the day,
Rest for the labour, light for the way,
Grace for the trials, help from above,
Unfailing kindness, undying love.

God hath not promised we shall not know
Toil and temptations, trouble and woe;
He hath not told us we shall not bear
Many a burden, many a care.

But God hath promised strength for the day,
Rest for the labour, light for the way,
Grace for the trials, help from above,
Unfailing kindness, undying love.

God hath not promised smooth roads and wide,
Swift, easy travel, needing no guide;
Never a mountain, rocky and steep,
Never a river turbid and deep.

But God hath promised strength for the day,
Rest for the labour, light for the way,
Grace for the trials, help from above,
Unfailing kindness, undying love."