Fear and Pain

Fear and Pain

For those of you who do not know me, my other job, when I am not writing devotionals and taking care of babies in the church nursery, is physical therapist. In my profession we have a common motto: Pain is a Liar.  Often times pain is not coming from the area we think it is. For instance, a rotator cuff injury can hurt in the elbow instead of the shoulder; a disc injury in the low back could cause pain in the leg; kidney damage can cause pain in the back, etc. This is why medicine isn't straight forward. Pain is a liar and often leads us down a dangerous path away from what we need most.  As I was reflecting on this today and our current societal situation I realize that fear and pain go hand in hand. My clinical specialty is chronic pain. Chronic pain is often not the result of direct physical injury, but more of the brain's way of manifesting internal pain in an external way. This doesn't mean the pain is not real, it absolutely is, after all pain is made in the brain. There are no magic pain nerves in the body, it is simply our body's way of responding to a threat. You put your hand in a fire, your body senses a threat and sends the message that there is pain in your hand so that you pull it from danger. Over time, our lives traumatize our bodies. Maybe through actual physical trauma that our bodies can not forget, but also emotional trauma. Our world is emotionally traumatized right now and everyone is responding to the pain that their bodies are enacting upon because of this emotional assault in different ways. Some people are lashing out in anger, others are crying in isolation and fear, others yet are seeking out ways to help even when it may seem fruitless. The response that pains me the most isn't the anger and violence that I am seeing, because it is almost predictable, although painful to see, but the one that hurts the most is the apathy I see from people. How when times get tough people feel so alone that they turn from God; they doubt he is there; they don't understand how a loving God can exist if he can allow bad things to happen. Please remember Romans 8:28 “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” This reminds me a lot of certain treatments that I have to perform in the clinic in order to help people heal and make them better. Sometimes I have to introduce a new, sometimes painful stimulus into the body in order to get the nervous system to focus on something else for a while and in essence “forget the other hurt”. The body becomes so desensitized to other things around it that it can not forget its current pain. In order to break it from the cycle I have to introduce a new, mild and not harmful pain and the body can finally break its chronic cycle after a while. I am working toward the purpose of relieving my patient's pain, but they often can't see it until they reach the end. I often wonder if that is God's intention in some way. We become so desensitized to the pain in the world, we become self centered and only focused on our own lives and our own pain that sometimes God has to give us a new pain to break us out of it and rely once again on Him and not ourselves. Fear is a liar. Fear makes way for doubt and pain. But perhaps that our fears right now are simply God's way of introducing a new stimulus for us to focus our attention, and maybe just maybe, it will bring us back to Him. I don't know about you but the threat of the corona-virus and racial tensions feels so much bigger than anything I can control. I am a person that is all about controlling outcomes, it is my job after all. I try to control the inputs to a person's body to help to reduce pain being the outcome. I get very good at controlling these outcomes in my patients that sometimes I struggle to turn that off in my life. Sometimes it takes something big to say, this is bigger than me and I need God. I have had many moments like that in my life. Moments when I felt God had abandoned me. But I refused to give up and tried to hold on just a little bit longer and eventually I was able to see that all things worked for His good. I focused on the fact that “Perfect love casts out all fear. - 1 John 4:18” There is no greater love than God's love and if he always keeps His promises then we should know that we should not fear for He is with us. There is no love like God's love and we should respond to our fears in kind, always battle others with love. When we are running the race of our life, so often it is hard to understand that the finish line isn't far. We want to give up, when the reward is really right around the corner. God tells us in Revelation 21:4 “He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” If you are in a place of fear and pain right now, I want you to keep in mind that it is a liar. God promises he will wipe away all the pain, the fear, the death, the fear. The God of all creation keeps his promises, but they won't happen on your time, they happen on His. Hold on, Pain ends – HOPE.  (Thank you Pastor Denny Miller for that amazing acrostic!)