Paul Brand in his well-known book, The Gift of Pain, proposes that pain is a gift of GOD that is meant to protect us from danger and death. But because we live in a disordered world, there are many chronic pain conditions that exist which don’t seem to serve any purpose at all. What good does it do for your body to continue to think it’s on fire when it’s not? When your brain actually starts to interpret painless sensory input as painful or mild discomfort as excruciating, there isn’t anything particularly good or helpful about that either.
What if emotional pain serves a similar purpose but when it goes on for too long without being properly addressed, it also begins to cause more harm than good? It’s occurred to me that a great deal of my physical pain might be emotional pain in disguise. The fancy, medical term is “somatization,” which sadly, can be a codified way of calling a patient’s symptoms imagined or invented. There is nothing imagined about my symptoms. But I’m wondering if my brain gets too overwhelmed with emotional pain and then converts some of those signals into physical ones. I am already accustomed to some parts of my body hurting most of the time. Perhaps it’s become easier for me to deal with intensified head, neck, TMJ, hip, and knee pain than the infinite layers of my emotional pain.
I have learned the hard way to no longer ignore my physical pain. I will actually slow down and rest now. I will cancel things and actually say no if I can. Medical appointments and alternative therapies now dominate my non-work time.
Unstoppable fatigue seems to be what happens when I have tried everything, all of my usual modalities and nothing is relieving it. The fatigue isn’t just about needing more sleep. It’s the kind of fatigue that weighs me down and prevents me from busying myself as a distraction. It’s like my body has learned how to literally force me to be still and take in the full extent of my physical maladies. Few things will drive a hyperproducer like me crazier than feeling trapped in a body that refuses to move but also refuses to sleep restfully.
I had no way of knowing how my body would respond to acupuncture and craniosacral therapy. The tension in my muscles causes some of the needles to migrate out so the acupuncturist has had to reapply them and extend my sessions. My craniosacral therapist spent an inordinate amount of our 90 min session coaxing my brain to relax my head and neck into her hands so she could passively move it. "Until your mind releases all of that internal strife, these sessions are going to deplete you." she told me. Even with those factors working against the treatments, the after effect was like being drugged with a hypnotic for several hours afterwards. After that affect begins to wear off, I can feel that the dial has moved slightly in the direction of improvement. That’s enough for me to keep at it for now.
With all of this in mind, I think a sabbatical of some kind is needed. Having this week off has been very good for me but I need more than a break from work. Questions that I am being asked—questions that I have asked others in my shoes with the best of intentions--are frustrating to me: What do you need? How can I support you through this? What can I do? It's like asking a polytrauma patient in the ICU if they want medications or surgery first. I have no idea! I have functioned broken for many years and in much worse shape than this so, beyond Jesus and time, I'm not sure about anything else. I admit that I drastically underestimated what it takes to be a working wife and mom in modern western society. Your material needs can be met but your social, emotional, physical, and psychological needs might need to suffer in order to do it. You can have two sets of retired parents who live too far away or are far too busy or are too unwilling to unpack the several storage units of baggage in your relationship to make the help that's offered actually helpful. You can have friendly neighbors who you hardly ever see and sisters and brothers in your church whose lives are so hectic that even finding time to break bread together is challenging.
None of this is meant to be accusatory or to complain. It’s simply an acknowledgement that our culture actively pushes against anything resembling rest, communal life, and inner tranquility. I keep hearing people say they want to resist this tide. I have been singing the same tune myself for quite a long time. But the only way to do it successfully is to commit to performing small but significant daily acts of resistance against the majority culture. In other words, overcome the profound exhaustion that causes most of us to be allow the tide to simply move us along and swim against the current. Personally, I would rather just get out of the water altogether, but that’s a whole different conversation.
I make the following statements with as much compassion and patience as I can possibly muster. I am all out of apologies right now. I don’t have room in my brain to carry around the guilt, shame, anxiety, and/or disappointment that my present circumstances and/or actions has caused the people around me. I have just enough stamina for the bare minimum and even that still feels like too much.
A dear friend invited me over the other day. My kids played with her kids, she fed them, and I took a nap on her back porch with the breeze blowing against my face. It was incredible. Another friend walked my daughter into school, so I didn’t have to take my son out of his car seat. She also got my daughter off of the bus and talked with me casually in the parking lot while our girls played. It was easy and light and required that I do nothing but enjoy the small gifts of those moments. A mother in Christ and I worked through some recent miscommunications over email. She ended our exchange with this sentiment that I will paraphrase here: I know you are struggling right now, and I don’t love you any less for it. I am here for you--" which is precisely what I needed to hear and be assured of in that moment. I don’t know how some people are just instinctively safe and comforting--they just are. My entire being senses this and instantly exhales. I dearly hope I have been this person for someone else.
My ultimate posture is joy. I’m not sure anyone who knows me personally actually believes that but I know it in my bones. This unmaking of my life is remaking me into someone whole. I’m yielding to this messy process because my ideas and plans continue to fail and frustrate me beyond measure. I’m enjoying sweet moments with my children and noticing the subtle way their features are changing as they grow. I’m basking in the early stirrings of spring, my perennials reawakening, the birds chattering in the pecan tree outside my bedroom window. I’m listening quietly to the feedback from those closest to me, even when it stings and my deepest instinct is to resist it. It’s all a necessary part of the process and I do need to learn from them. It’s not a matter of if I will overcome but when it will happen and how it will look.
I leave you with this final thought:
Now unto him that is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy, to the only wise God our Saviour, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and ever. Amen. (Jude 1:24, 25)
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