Story: Coping With Chronic Pain
Lael Arrington has learned that God is making her heart more beautiful despite some of the disfigurement brought on by rheumatoid arthritis.
“Honor and enjoy your Creator while you're still young before the years take their toll and your vigor wanes… in old age, your body no longer serves you so well. Muscles slacken, grip weakens, joints stiffen.” (Ecclesiastes 12 MSG) Yes, this is the way it is supposed to happen—“In old age.”
But my joints stiffened with rheumatoid arthritis at age 29. My toes and fingers are bent in directions God never designed and strappy sandals should never expose. My grip has weakened. My muscles—well, let’s just say that the more fabric I need to cover up, the more the styles shrink. Today’s fabrics seem especially made to stretch around my non-muscles. I find a tiny bit of consolation in the fact that my friends are finally catching up with my frustration.
“You can't come and go at will… Hikes to the mountains are a thing of the past.”
In the margin of my Bible I wrote, “Dear Lord, what grief to live old for so long. I long for healing, vigor, coming and going at will—no limitations, hikes in the mountain —I long to put on incorruptible flesh.”
We who live in chronic pain find ourselves outside the quick fix or even the normal plot line of life where conflict intensifies until we win (or lose) and the conflict is resolved. We live in a place of no victory. No resolution. Where the conflict with pain goes on and on. How do we cope?
My greatest comfort comes from Solomon’s advice to young people: “Honor and enjoy your Creator.” Sometimes I avoid reading Song of Solomon because, as a former beauty queen, I mourn the loss of physical beauty celebrated in that book. But I’ve been reading it lately noticing the way the bridegroom enjoys his bride’s beauty. I think of the way Jesus desires me as his bride with the same intensity. And I feel a deep relief and encouragement to know that he looks right past my outward appearance into my heart—the deepest, truest me. He enjoys the beauty of my heart. “How beautiful you are, my darling! Oh, how beautiful!” I respond to his enjoyment by enjoying him. “My lover is mine and I am his.”
I look back on years of suffering and realize that through 24 years of pain, limitation and loss, through a fractured hip, four joint replacements and bottles of tears, God has made my heart more and more beautiful as I have leaned on him. He has torn into strongholds of pride and selfishness that were nourished by my health and outer beauty and is using the pain to make me his bride with a beautiful heart. Have you ever considered that, because of what God is doing through your pain, the real you is ever more beautiful? God delights in our beauty and we can’t help but enjoy him in return.
How do we respond to the diminished activity and hours of extra rest we may need? First, we need to give ourselves permission to rest and not feel guilty because we cannot keep a healthy pace. But we needn’t default into in a passive, couch potato lifestyle. In the early days I would sink into my blue recliner and lose myself in a part-time job of watching TV 20 hours a week. I have since discovered an invitation to solitude and silence as a gift—time to read and pray, and think about what he is teaching me and the life he invites me to live.
We can sink into the Psalms—pouring our pain into David’s words. We can imagine the deliverance he celebrates at the end of his prayer and echo his thanks to God. We can grab the lifeline of 2 Corinthians and 1 Peter. We also have time to phone or write messages of encouragement and pray for others.
Perhaps you find yourself thinking, “I can’t do this alone.” God never intended you to bear so much pain alone. We can enjoy gifted, healing authors like Larry Crabb (Shattered Dreams) and James Dobson (When God Doesn’t Make Sense). Instead of pulling back from church and friends, we must pull in. Find a small group or a prayer partner. Seek help from church leaders. Let others enjoy the blessing of helping you. They have been commissioned by Jesus to bind up the brokenhearted and release the prisoners from darkness.
Learning about our pain and proactively engaging a doctor we can talk to about our care, eating right, getting as much exercise as our pain allows—the world constantly reminds us to take care of our bodies. But living in chronic pain we must above all guard our hearts and let God soothe our pain from the inside out.
Lael Arrington is an author, Christian speaker on apologetics and the wife of a pastor living in Pinehurst, Texas. Visit her site: LaelArrington.com
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