THE PAIN PLIGHT

AS SOME OF YOU KNOW, my most recent struggle has been with pain. Greater than simply a challenge, pain is attempting to take over my life. My activities are limited, and what I can do I do with a pillow between my back and wherever I am seated. Standing for any length of time is not an option.

TODAY AT THE SURGEON’S OFFICE I received first-hand proof that I’m no hypochondriac. A tumor the size of a golf ball has wrapped its ugly self around one of the nerve trunks that exits the spinal column. Even on the doctor’s impersonal computer screen, it looked painful.

OF COURSE . . . THE TUMOR IS INOPERABLE. To get permanent relief I’ll have to wait for the treatments I’m currently undergoing to smack that tumor around. LORD, ARE YOU LISTENING?

I WAS SOMEWHAT PREPARED for the surgery-really-isn’t-an-option message. Five years ago on July fifteenth, I heard nearly the same words. Only then the prognosis had been very grim. Today this is only about relief, not life or death.

YET IN SPITE OF THE PREDICTIONS MY POOR FAMILY HAD TO LISTEN TO THEN, here I am--still alive. Still useful. It is, after all, God’s world. He does get a vote on how it’s run, which brings up another point in this crazy Christian faith where many of the answers seem to contradict themselves.

BEFORE I BECAME ILL I never really believed evil had power. I thought that the devil was blamed for choices people made that sent them in the wrong direction. If they suffered, they had only themselves to blame.

ENTER CANCER. Careful in the sun, quick to supplement my diet with vitamins and nutrients to promote health and ward off the Big C, I was the last person I expected to come down with anything, much less this terrible disease. Yet here I am in the midst of a contest between good and evil—conducted in my very own body.

AFTER WATCHING THIS BATTLE for several years, I’d grown to believe that if I lost it would be because I fell under the temptation of despair. Now I’ve come to believe that pain is my personal demon.

PAIN HAS THE POWER to destroy faith. It tempts me to believe that God would never allow any child He cares about to suffer. But then I remember His only son. Even He wasn’t exempt. When He climbed Calvary Hill, pain brought Him to his knees several times. Our God understands suffering.

AND IF I HAVE ANY SENSE, this pain will bring me to my knees as well. Where there’s a problem, there’s a solution. God is still in charge. I just need to wait again for His solution.

You’re blessed. Be a blessing!