Are You Misreading Your Pain?
In the spring of 2018, I began to notice that my lower back was sore all the time. This seemed a little bit unusual but Barb and I were doing lots of landscaping work in the yard. We were moving dirt, laying landscaping stones and putting down mulch which all required lots of lifting and bending. The pain, while more intense and more constant than other times in my life, it was explainable I thought? First, I was older than I used to be and I was doing a lot of heavy physical labor that was not normal for me. The pain seemed consistent with what was going on in my life and I didn’t see any need to explore it further.
That all changed Sunday morning June 10, 2018, when I woke up and was going to get out of bed for the day. As I sat up and moved to put my legs over the side of the bed, my lower back exploded in pain. I also found that I had great difficulty walking, with my right leg and foot not responding as they had normally. After a week’s worth of doctoring and diagnostic tests I found that the pain I thought was too much yard work was, in fact, spinal stenosis. This more serious condition is defined by an abnormal narrowing of the spinal column where the nerves are pinched causing both intense pain and impairment. The solution was not pain relievers and rest but a surgical procedure called an L3 L4 laminectomy. I had seriously misdiagnosed the source of my pain.
While I am now pain-free and have long ago returned to my normal routine, I have had many months to think about that experience. In some of that reflection, God showed me that I am also prone to misdiagnose the pain associated with my spiritual and emotional life. There is a tendency to blame others, including God, for the negative circumstances and emotions that I sometimes experience, like anger, sadness or discouragement. The situations of relational conflict or the words that are spoken by others are often just neutral triggers that the enemy uses to stir up old hurts and the lies we have believed about ourselves and other people. And as long as we continue to blame other things outside of ourselves, we will never find healing and freedom because we are misdiagnosing the problem. If I blame you, I never get fixed.
All of this points to our need to have others speaking into our lives, especially the Holy Spirit. With the help of the Holy Spirit, loving friends and trained ministers can help us identify the blind spots and tear down the strongholds, releasing healing and freedom. A way to invite the Holy Spirit in is to pray Psalm 139:23-24, “search me O God, and know my heart, try me and know my anxious thoughts and see if there be any hurtful way (literally way of pain) in me, and lead me in the everlasting way." God desires that we be healed and free but we need to be willing to invite others into our blind spots. Open your heart and receive from Him, He is waiting to meet you in the midst of the pain you don’t understand.
Author
Pastor Bruce is the Executive Director of God's Living Stones. He lives in Omaha, NE, with his wife Barb. They have two adult children.
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