painfully aware

I will be honest . . . I am exhausted! beyond exhausted! and the thought of what tomorrow holds, exhausts me even more. Today I have done two things repeatedly.

1] repeated the scripture that says, "God has given me everything i need for LIFE and godliness..." when I am tired and works seems a bit overwhelming I remind myself that HE helped get me this job [for example], its what I am called to right now and He is faithful in helping me do it to the best of my ability.

2] Debated with myself about not blogging today. . . simply posting a "till next time" notice. . . but the whole purpose of me blogging everyday is to get more disciplined with my writing. If i skip a day now, then it negates the point of discipline and also makes it easier to skip another day later....

So *please pat me on the back and encourage me* here I am. . . blogging.

Tonight I am going to chat a bit about the topic of pain. A friend of mine just had "Dry/Hot needle" therapy as part of her physiotherapy. its an almost contradictory statement at face value. They will use a needle to inflict pain/injury into a muscle that is paining/injured to relieve pain. [i am not a doctor, but that is how it was explained to me.] Sounds odd doesn't it. But apparently it works, and is scientifically proven.

This of course got my brain thinking about pain. Not many people enjoy pain. whether it is emotional or physical, we generally don't enjoy pain. In fact pain usually causes us to become grumpy and moody and prolonged pain can cause depression and a whole host of other issues. Pain is even used to inflict torture and to interrogate people.

But sometimes pain has its benefits. I work for a doctor, a gynecologist/obstetrician to be exact. So pain is a big indicator in my boss's line of work. It tells us either that something is wrong in the body - it can be an sign of a cyst or fibroid or cancer or endometriosis etc.  Without the pain, because this occurs INSIDE the body, many would be unaware, and wouldn't be able to receive necessary treatment.

And of course pain, can be a sign that new life is about to come into this world, as labour begins. Now each woman is different and has different pain thresholds. But the contractions are like a warning sign, that its time for baby to enter the world.

In these instances pain is not a bad thing, its a helpful thing, a warning in a sense. I know in Gen 3, it says that Eve would have increased pain in childbirth. That has made me wonder if there was pain in the garden. I don't have an answer to that question. I know if pain existed it wouldn't be corrupted/harmful pain because it was before the fall. But regardless of whether pain existed or not, our bodies were created with the ability to feel pain. God didn't scrap His first design of human beings after the fall and re-create our bodies with a new design to accommodate a fallen world.

God, in His goodness, had already created our bodies to accommodate the fall of man that was to come. Our bodies were created to heal diseases inside - our immune system. and many things like this which would technically be unnecessary in Eden before the fall. So the ability to feel pain must have a purpose and reason.

Another thing that pain is good for, is to prevent further injury. When you injure yourself, you are often warned to take it easy and not assume you are healed because the medicines prescribed for you will numb your pain. Thus making your body assume its ok, and then you can do more damage or injure yourself further if you are not careful. I know many sportspeople [and i was like this back in the day], who will sustain an injury, get it treated, take the painmeds and get straight back up and continue competing. Often sustaining a far worse injury in the long run, but at the time it didn't matter. We had blocked the pain and tricked ourselves into thinking the injury wasn't significant.

We do this in our own lives too. Our emotional and spiritual pain should serve as a warning sign, that something isn't right. Either we are in phantom limb syndrome - cut off and not even realising it yet. Or there is an injury, a wound and we need healing. But too often we ignore the pain, "medicate it" and carry on. . . to our own detriment. the world does this, they use drugs and alcohol and sex etc to numb themselves. . .

But i know in the church we do this too. Now we might not use sin as a way to numb our wounds but we do use "spiritual bandaids".  We have a set of things we do, whether its serve more, get more involved, make a decision to forgive and move on, worship 5 more minutes a day etc. Often we apply the bandaid but we dont clean the wound and put the healing salve on it. We push through the pain, by using our will . . . and bypass our God who is our healer and our comforter. And all goes well, until the painkiller wears off/stops working or we do further injury.

Don't get my wrong, we need to painkillers and bandaids. . . but we also need HEALING. So don't ignore your pain. Stop, acknowledge it, find out why its there. Go to your HEALER and get some healing and then by all means apply the bandaid and take the painkiller.

Psalm 34:18 [NLT]
The Lord is close to the brokenhearted; he rescues those whose spirits are crushed.