In the world of intractable severe pain, there is only one question worth asking....and that is: “when Lord,? When Is It Going to Stop???” Even the “why's?” pale to insignificance in front of that one.
When you crawl into bed, gasping and gritting your teeth in agony, having just returned home from a brutal outing to a store...from riding in the car with an insensate spouse who drives 95 mph in both city and highway....over potholes and round racetrack corners...bouncing, jarring and slamming your body (the one whose neurons feel like they are being boiled in oil or skewered over a barbeque because the pain is so intense) around the car like a ball in a tournament of beach volleyball. You get out, gasping and hoping to God your joints stay in their sockets as you struggle to raise your body from it's folded position in the compact car you had known he would and had prayed he wouldn't buy ...trying to ignore him standing ...not offering assistance, ...but foot-tapping his impatience and the oaths he mutters at your slowness....and trying -with teeth gritted – not to scream aloud at the pain which results.
Limping through the kitchen..you gaze ruefully at the pile of dirty dishes and the mail littering the kitchen table....and go, stripping your clothes off slowly, painfully (more often than not, hurting too much to bother with undressing—and merely fall straightway into bed, clothes intact---and closing your eyes at the sweet agony that results from the pain of relaxing your body into supine position -lying in an straight backed, straight arms and legged position....because every body part just refuses to fold again and falling deeply into the sleep of complete exhaustion – even though it's still several hours shy of ten.
Then, at some point, usually sooner rather than later, you become aware of it...its throbbing like the call of the jungle drum that drives natives into fevered paroxysm: pounding and concussing your body into consciousness...the body that calls, no SCREAMS , to move...slowly, carefully (replete with gasps and muttered curses) yet IMMEDIATELY...without hesitation or delay....into a different position...very preferably onto a different surface altogether. Staggering under the burden of agony, you make your way the whole 3'-mile onto the recliner that stands ready and waiting. And sit. Knowing that sleep -the sweet respite of unconsciousness is gone now, for good. Or at least for this night...and the duration must be endured and dealt with via distraction and with frequent position changes...back and forth between the bed and recliner and you both pray for and dread morning's light.
In the morning, having perhaps drowned in another shallow puddle of sleep, you awake, to the great crashing waves of pain on your shores...You lie for a moment, hearing the roar and as the waves begin to break over you, crushing you face first into the ground, then you come up coughing and swallowing/spitting salt and sand.....It's gonna be a bad day. You try to rise to your feet ; to get your founding so that you can maybe make it to the bathroom or feed the hungry cat who right now is biting your toe to remind you of her hunger and need but then shards of glass join the waves and slice you to ribbons at the small attempt at rising....
Thus begins the quest: the prowl for relief...for comfort, which will lead you to alternately pace and then to move once more from recliner to bed or back—all motivated by two false assumptions. One of those is that somewhere somehow there must exist a place of respite---and that you have only to do the right thing or series of things, and you will find it. And the other is the belief that it must be the BED or the Chair or the Standing that is heightening your pain...completely ignoring the fact that your pain is alive...has a self sustained existence away from any visible cause and that you are the POSSESSION of this entity of foul intent. And that, no matter where you go or how fast you can run, you cannot escape the grip of this malevolent enemy which will will dog you and pursue you until you at last, exhausted and still hurting confess and “uncle” up to say … “I surrender...do what I will, I cannot escape or hide”.
Then Happily, having gotten what it wanted, the Pain then obliges....to make you more miserable than you'd previously understood misery to be.
And thus it goes...with little variation and less respite than none – day after day, week after week. Month after month, year after year, decade after decade...despite heaven's sympathetic apprehension of your prayers for a more speedy end.
this world has nothin for me.
This world has NOTHING for me.
I need you Jesus, come to my Rescue...tell me? Where else can I go??
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