One of my coping skills for dealing with chronic pain is visualizing specific others who are walking through trauma that is way beyond my imagination. If I see a news story about refugees fleeing their country with nothing but the clothes on their backs I say, “At least I’m not one of them.” If I hear a testimonial of a mother losing her child to murder, I say to myself, “At least my children and grandchildren are still with me.” If I hear about a friend whose child got picked up and is in jail, I say to myself, “At least my sons are productive citizens and know better.” The list goes on infinitum. My reasoning is: your pain is more debilitating than mine, your sorrow weighs heavier than mine, your heart is more broken than mine. . . . . .
Therefore, you win the trauma Olympics!
I don’t look like an Olympian. I don’t feel like an Olympian, and I certainly don’t move like an Olympian. Yet, most mornings, I get dressed in my Olympian outfit, maybe with a superhero cape tied around my neck, and adopt the Olympian stance of ready-set-go. I ask myself, “What race of faith do I need to run today? What dive into the unknown is going to be asked of me? Which marathon do I need to line up for?”
I don’t know. But my solace, my comfort, my readiness is that my soul has practiced for a long, long time and my body is prepared by God’s grace. And if my vigor wains, I have a team of family and friends who will run with me to the end.
Sometimes you might think you’re in this chronic pain alone, but you’re not!
Are you practiced up and prepared?
Standing at the swell of the muddy Mississippi
after the urgent care doctor had just said, “Well,
sometimes *@#$% happens,” I fell fast and hard for New Orleans all over again. Pail pills swirled
in the purse along with a spell for later. It’s taken a while for me to admit,
I am in a raging battle with my body, a spinal column thirty-five degrees
bent, vertigo that comes and goes like a DC Comics
villain nobody can kill. Invisible pain is both
a blessing and a curse. “You always look so happy,”
said a stranger once as I shifted to my good side
grinning. But that day, alone on the riverbank,
brass blaring from the Steamboat Natchez,
out of the corner of my eye, I saw a girl, maybe half my age,
dressed, for no apparent reason, as Wonder Woman.
She strutted by in all her strength and glory, invisible,
eternal, and when I stood to clap (because who wouldn’t have),
she bowed and posed like she knew I needed a myth –
a woman, by a river, indestructible.