Spiritual Fitness & Living With Chronic Pain

You’re not called to change for the sake of changing.  Nor are you called to change just because you’re undergoing some form of oppressive suffering.  While change is a reality of life, it’s not necessarily the guiding light to take you to a better place.  Sometimes when you’re broken into pieces, it’s better to wait before you react.  Sometimes it’s just as important to develop the skill of what it means to wait in order to realize the state of well-being.

Nonetheless, it seems like change is forced upon many of us, knocking us down to the canvas of life.  Do you feel it?  Are you part of the growing brokenness of this world? Are your dreams completely annihilated?  Or your marriage irreparably damaged?  Perhaps your health has fallen prey to chronic pain or terminal illness?  Or you’re addicted to drugs, pornography and spending?  Or you’ve simply given up, as you’ve become part of the American epidemic, eating yourself into oblivion and becoming unrecognizable about your true self?

You’re not alone.  Injustice, conflict and suffering can be found throughout several individual life stories.  In fact, as the relational tragedies continue to grow so do the complexity of problems, many for which we do not have immediate solutions.  Even though we assimilate additional knowledge through emerging technologies, I still wonder if we’re missing another aspect about being severely wounded.  Perhaps it’s just as prudent to embrace the full meaning with what has happened to us, as this common link about our brokenness, I firmly believe, will actually lead us on the true path of self-discovery.

Keep me on your favorites about spiritual fitness.  You can begin this exciting journey of transformation regardless if you’re living with chronic pain or if you’re struggling against horrendous obstacles.

Do you really believe in fair trade of the heart?  When there seems to be an imbalance between who you are and the degree of overwhelming difficulties you continually face?  As I see it, if your beliefs waver back and forth, then this reoccurring imbalance will gradually lead to having a hardened heart instead of possessing an optimistic attitude.

It’s hard to imagine feeling happy when it seems like the world is traumatically falling apart around us.  But the truth is you’ve been given the choice to choose.  Regardless of the crises of injustice, conflict and suffering, though you don’t have a monopoly about your future, God certainly does.

In essence, God doesn’t place any hope in the future like we have to do.  Rather, He already holds the keys to the eternal richness about future events and what lies ahead.

I believe fair trade of the heart actually means to give your heart fully unto God.  Isn’t this really the best plausible choice for your life?

Keep me on your favorites about spiritual fitness.  You can begin this exciting journey of transformation regardless if you’re living with chronic pain or if you’re struggling against horrendous obstacles.

I must admit.  From time to time I also struggle with embracing what it means to totally surrender to God.  Isn’t it somewhat natural to wonder, to speculate and to ask questions about its meaning during our journey of faith?  I think so.

To surrender does not mean that you’re to become less intellectual or to voluntarily squander your talents or to give away all your hard earned money or to do anything impulsive of trying to become nothing, such as what I’ve just mentioned.  As much, surrendering is not the process of waving the white flag to signify your resignation about living.

Sure it’s difficult to surrender when you’re vulnerable, weak, disheartened and quite frankly, there’s nothing left in the tank for you to even think about trusting anyone or anything else.  Nonetheless, you’re not required to trust in yourself or others before fully surrendering to God.

Take Jesus for instance, the sole basis of faith.  In order to discover the entirety of His own true self, He completely surrendered to God through perhaps the most human act ever, dying gruesomely by crucifixion. This acceptance of surrender allowed Jesus to experience the fullness of human life, even in the midst of unspeakable suffering.

The human truth is that we complicate what it means to surrender to God.  We’re not called to become perfect before giving our lives to Him.  Instead, the opposite occurs.  We’re called by God to give Him all of our brokenness and sin.  This is the beauty about surrender.  As a result, the process of surrendering cleanses and transforms us from being complacently useless to becoming actively recoverable.

You’re not left doing nothing with your life just because you’ve surrendered.  In fact, you’re given more responsibility to do what God’s authorized you to do by His Spirit.

Inevitably, the purpose of surrendering to God empowers you to discover the totality of who you are, as well as finding out the essential truth about the rewarding mysteries of life.

Keep me on your favorites about spiritual fitness.  You can begin this exciting journey of transformation regardless if you’re living with chronic pain or if you’re struggling against horrendous obstacles.

Faith radically contrasts the worldly lifestyle. This is one sobering reason why it’s so difficult to remain consistent when undergoing healthy change.

As you’re trying to overcome painful wounds or morbid obesity, the battle over your well-being is simultaneously occurring.

The voice of the world boldly gives sensible advice, such as what to do medically, psychologically or alternatively, regarding how to address the obvious problems. The idea of which is to heal, to restore and to bring you back to some form of normalcy. The merits of which are extremely beneficial.

Yet, faith plays an even larger role about transformation. In fact, its integrative qualities provide total healing and optimized health for your entire being.

Faith doesn’t arbitrarily reject sound logic nor does it compete against higher intellect. It simply contends against any thinking or behaviors which oppose God.

In your quest for wholeness, you basically have two options to consider. First, you can simply rely on the entirety of what this world has to offer for the fulfillment of your life.

Or second, you can place your hope in the truth of Jesus Christ, who will open the eyes of your soul to “see” and to “experience” the completeness of life beyond death.

Keep me on your favorites about spiritual fitness. You can begin this exciting journey of transformation regardless if you’re living with chronic pain or if you’re up against horrendous obstacles.

One of the hardest things to do is to fully trust God. When it boils down to life and death, I think most of us are willing to surrender to the idea that it’s better to trust God about matters of the afterlife as opposed to the alternative. Yet, when it involves trusting God daily for everything else we need to live, then why do we get so easily side-tracked into our own sense of self-sufficiency?

For most of us, it’s easier to relate to what self-sufficiency means in terms of identity, security and purpose. And when we fully participate at our highest levels of performance, then we also see the value behind self-sufficiency through the lens of our own human effort, especially in comparison to others and the world around us.

On the other hand, faith is less tangible to our senses. It’s not fueled by self-empowerment nor is it inspired by human accomplishment nor does it subject itself to worldly acceptance. Simply stated, self-sufficiency opposes the power of faith. No wonder one of the hardest things to do is to fully trust God. It requires everything against our human compulsions for self-approval. In summary, taking our eyes off ourselves and looking onto God fully empowers faith to become real as our way for living.

Keep me on your favorites about spiritual fitness. You can begin this exciting journey of transformation regardless if you’re living with chronic pain or if you’re up against horrendous obstacles.

I had never imagined getting to the place where I resisted the idea of change. Once upon a time when I was younger and healthier, I thrived on the challenges of spontaneity. Nothing seemed outside the realm of possibility. That was then. The story of my life has taken a much different turn than I anticipated. Perhaps you can relate to what I’m saying, when your life unsuspectingly ends up dealing with painful things much bigger than who you are?

When too many days are lost to personal suffering, your confidence becomes shattered and without even realizing it, your ability to cope with change slowly but noticeably diminishes because of long-term pain and brokenness.

So when you decide to make that fresh new start, you probably do so from the starting point of being wounded. Without overstating the obvious, this is much more difficult to do than when you’re healthy. And remarkably, being wounded doesn’t mean that you can recognize the extent of your damage – which is now part of who you’ve become. As a result, your first step in the right direction might be somewhat wobbly and your gait seemingly unfitting to stay on the road to recovery.

But as I’ve discussed before, what’s really being tested? Is it the enormity of your wounds or is it your beliefs? Change is always harder when your beliefs are powerless. When trying to get rid of your old behaviors for the new and improved, inevitably your beliefs are being tested.

Sure painful experiences help to create your conscious memories, but this does not necessarily mean that they have to primarily comprise your beliefs. I know that if I had held permanently onto the hopelessness found in brokenness, then I would have never participated in the redeemed lifestyle. Instead, I probably would have remained limp on the couch, discouraged about the changing world around me and immobilized from lack of exercise while eating myself to death. You don’t have to allow your painful memories to keep you hostage in the miry clay.

Simply, change becomes palatable when your mind is renewed. And when referring to renewal, I’m not talking about compiling more thoughts about personal change on top of your latent wounds. This tendency leads to double-minded unsteadiness in your search for wholeness.

Change is not easy, but it is rewarding. Wisdom does not eliminate your trials nor does it make change any easier to bear. I know this sounds unpopular among those who are searching for quick fixes or who are traveling the path of least resistance. However, the true wisdom of God provides you with the ability to endure whatever you have to face.

As wisdom has formed the backbone of my beliefs, it also has fortified my resolve to move forward more powerfully, as it will for you. Your wobbly first step can be transformed into deliberate, brisk walking against the voice of doubtful and hurtful memories.

Keep me on your favorites about spiritual fitness. You can begin this exciting journey of transformation regardless if you’re living with chronic pain or if you’re up against horrendous obstacles.

After taking the first step forward, the next footstep towards change becomes even more difficult due to the inconspicuous nature of doubt.

To change from your old ways of doing things means to change how you think. Ironically, this is precisely where doubt attaches itself – within your mental abilities to process – in terms of how you perceive who you are and what your significance really means.

Even before the heel of your foot strikes the ground on your second step, the odds are highly against you from moving forward without opposition. It is more likely that you should anticipate doubt to thunderously raise its voice against your earnest desire to change for the better.

From one perspective, you might be filled with inspired optimism from God, being able to imagine the best of the best for yourself. No more pain. No more sorrow. No more poverty. And to boot, perhaps, you’ll finally conquer your worst fears of never being able to overcome your biggest obstacles.

On the other hand, all you have to do is to look into the mirror. Change doesn’t seem to happen fast enough. By its nature, doubt will inevitably rush to your thoughts, reminding you of your repeated blunders, as well as your inability to refrain from addictions, such as overeating, over-drinking, overdosing, overspending, over-procrastinating, and for that matter, over anything else.

As for me, I kept reverting back to my old ways of trying to change. Being stripped to almost nothing still wasn’t enough because I continually relied on the few instincts that once gave me tremendous success. Practically speaking, I had placed my faith on the strongest parts of my willful mind to try to overcome chronic pain and obesity. The end result of my efforts fell miserably short of my expectations.

Meanwhile, in terms of how I perceived doubt, well, quite frankly, I thought very little about its existence. Doubt seemed to be the least of my problems in comparison to the constant barrage of pain I had experienced. Fooled by the loudness of pain, I kept trying to overcome what I thought was the fiery test of my life, which seemed obvious to me – painful suffering.

Nevertheless, I learned that pain wasn’t really the enemy I needed to defeat. In fact, the insistent communicator of pain actually pointed me to seek the truth when nothing else was working for me. And the deeper I went by faith, the more I discovered the living reality of God.

Slowly the scales were being removed from the eyes of my soul. The painful instruments of trials were deliberately clearing away the blind spots about walking in change. Fiery pain wasn’t preventing me from moving forward, but instead, it was doubt.

What’s really on trial? It’s not your brokenness. On the contrary, it’s your belief system. Your most seemingly insurmountable trials aren’t the reasons that prevent progressive changes from happening. Rather, it’s the deceptiveness of doubt that stops you from seeing how to effectively live out the process of your redeemed life.

Keep me on your favorites about spiritual fitness. You can begin this exciting journey of transformation regardless if you’re living with chronic pain or if you’re up against horrendous obstacles.

The day after is usually very difficult when you’re trying to erase your past failures as you fight to live for a new life.

Have you ever experienced anything like this in your own life? When you try with all of your might to truly make things different? And instead, it feels like you keep repeating the cycle of defeat because you can’t break out of your depression due to pain or you can’t lose weight or you can’t overcome addictions?

I have. In fact, I had lost my personal battles against pain, depression, fatigue and compulsive eating several times over the span of the last decade or so.

Full of pain-filled excuses, I had tried to hide behind the lies and the shame of not being able to change my own circumstances.

Years of pain and subsequent obesity defined who I had appeared to be outwardly more than what was really on the inside of me.

It discouraged me even more so because I confidently knew who I was inwardly. And what I knew about myself spiritually did not visibly translate into any images of redemptive living. In actuality, the power of unresolved pain was winning the fight against my resolve to change into someone better.

As optimistic as I had tried to be, the results never seemed to match my expectations. In essence, I had leaned on my own abilities, and I really didn’t know how to tap into the power of Christ within me. It was as if there was a barrier between my beliefs about the power of God and the practical reality regarding the powerlessness about my brokenness.

So what do you do when you’re determined to make changes and nothing seems to effectively work?

From what I’ve discovered, don’t try to keep building yourself up to break through some contrived pain barrier that you’ve created in your own mind. Freedom and life aren’t waiting for you beyond this imaginary point. You’re not called to fight harder, run faster, think more intelligently and conquer all obstacles when you really can’t solve the problems all by yourself.

And that’s where you sometimes end up in your journey of life. And that’s when the ultimate test is given to you.

Realities about sustainability, conversion, peace and true life are freely given by the life-giving power of Christ. And when His Spirit lives in you because of your faith, even if you don’t sense Him yet, your expectations can only grow once you see the power of God exceed what you currently see and believe about your existence today.

Your miracle is not automatically given to you from some outside source nor does it happen instantaneously because you deserve it from your efforts toward self-empowerment.

On the contrary, your miracle about living the changed life centers on what’s within your inner being. To truly tap into this life-changing power is to put your full trust into the hands of God.

This means this. Surrender yourself to Jesus Christ. And when you do this, your life becomes His. Over time, then your thoughts will become like His. And furthermore, then you’ll start acknowledging that your “day-after” experiences will fade away because you’re not relying exclusively on your own abilities.

Change happens throughout a process. As you progress on this journey, then you will begin to rely on God’s strength even more so because He will become the motivation for your living. Life will take on a whole new meaning. And regarding the idea about long-term change, you really can’t achieve this without having an attitude of humility. Meanwhile throughout the process of starting fresh, although your brokenness might still exist, you don’t need to be humble on your own efforts.

By surrendering to the Spirit of Christ within you, His power of humility will provide the miracle of permanent change within you.

I know there’s quite a lot of information for you to digest. But please stick with me as I explain from future writings how the power of the Spirit of Christ can practically transform you from your old ways of living to the new ones awaiting you.

Keep me on your favorites about living with chronic pain and spiritual fitness.

Okay – you’ve done it. You have finally reached the point where backwards doesn’t count anymore. At last, you’ve firmly decided to do something radically different with your life no matter how damaged you undoubtedly feel or how heavy your circumstances might actually weigh.

I can vividly recall how I felt the day after I had decided to live differently. Full of grim and vigor, I was fiercely determined to make some long-lasting changes. I had reached the point where my old ways of living felt like they were killing me.

For years, the experts had tried to help me out of my brokenness, and for some reason, their efforts, combined with mine, had not totally freed me from the snare of the trapper.

The more I had listened to the sound advice of others, including medical experts, the more it seemed as if I had more to do to reach the point of becoming better. And it was like a mirage because I no longer recognized what better really looked like anymore. Chronic pain and morbid obesity and inner struggles about my purpose cleverly eluded my abilities to make things better.

It felt like I was holding on to a bag of leftovers about myself. In a sense, I thought I would have to live in some form of denial to compensate for my weaknesses. In other words, to walk meant that I had to limp; to feel better meant that I had to hide behind the lies about my unfortunate circumstances; to live by faith meant that I had to deny parts of who I was, and so forth.

Regardless, I had shown fortitude. Basically it was my way of demonstrating brute strength against self-deterioration, trying just about every conceivable exercise about self-improvement, pain-mediation, weight loss and spiritual healing known to man. In the end, the results were minimal with no evidence of sustainable pain relief or return to functional normalcy.

You might relate to the feeling of starting over, hoping to attain some level of improvement, then eventually failing, and then again repeating the process over and over again without having any real success. Things that once came easy, such as simple tasks, low-level physical exercise and keeping to a simple diet plan now had become insurmountable obstacles.

During the middle of trying to make better changes, when you think you can’t do them, then this is what usually happens. But more discouraging is when you don’t even attempt to make changes because your pain hurts you too much. I hesitate to elaborate about the darker sides of brokenness.

Nonetheless, at this very moment, you’re where I was nearly three and a half years ago. You’ve reached that place where resolve is born from the inside out.

Practically speaking for me, I decided to go against the grain of my urges. The process started out slowly. Instead of choosing the short-term fix for pain relief by constantly taking medications, or losing around 5-10 pounds instead of 50 or more, or settling for 8 hours of couch time as opposed to walking on the treadmill, I opted to get out of my unhealthy mindset though my body went in to a tantrum.

Although I’ve always appreciated various systematic and fairly reliable ways to handle painful affliction, I remember when I crossed over from thinking too small to dreaming much bigger. And the odd thing is that I knew I could no longer rely on self, of any form, to overcome the things of self. It had to be done more powerfully through God.

Today is the beginning place to start your new life. Albeit, just getting here has already been a tumultuous journey. This place where you’ve planted your feet is rock solid, giving you the necessary support to experience a redemptive life of self-discovery and ultimate purpose.

Keep up with these blogs about living with chronic pain and spiritual fitness to help you to work out the kinks about moving from the old ways of living to uncovering the hidden power which lies deep within you.

I’ve noticed that it is difficult for those who are unaffected by chronic pain to really understand the heart of those who are truly going through some horrendous times.

Case in point, it’s easy for the unencumbered individual to say, “Today is the day to get started to make changes.  Don’t wait another moment.  Change is good for you, so what are you waiting for?”

But until he or she has actually walked in your shoes and truly understands your pain, as well as the obstacles and fears that you have, then the power behind his or her voice is puny.

Getting started is a matter of surrendering your will. And in the process of surrendering your will, you have to know with whom to surrender.

And in terms of what I’m really trying to convey, when you’re at the crossroads between utter despair or rebooting your life, deliberate choices must be made or you’ll become the victim of not choosing either path.

You may have heard the expression that life is an accumulation of choices. Well, in an odd sense, it oftentimes is viewed from this perspective. But I encourage you to look at life differently – from a place where your initial choice is not actually yours.

You might believe that you have total control about what you’re doing or how you’re going to handle certain predicaments, but this behavioral approach merely scratches the surface of what it means to participate in sustainable change.

Getting started begins deep within you. Most likely, your painful wounds and brokenness are inconspicuously hidden and deeply intertwined within your soul, trying to take over who you really are.

Trying to completely heal yourself first or straightening out the ugly parts before you get started on the road to better living never happens as you intend it too.

Getting started means to go to that place that God created within you. Simply, this place can only be found through faith. This place is intended for the invisible parts of who you are to interact with an invisible God. That’s why it takes faith.

Getting started requires your full surrender to the One who created faith. This is why your choice is not of your own volition. It’s God’s, and it’s meant for your wholeness and healing through His redemptive act of love.

This is why it is vitally important to surrender to God. This is the place, deepest within your inner being, where God meets you most lovingly and powerfully. When you’re vulnerable and honest and real with Him in this place, as oftentimes happens when you’re completely broken, this is where change begins by the activity of His Spirit.

This is the best way to get started with new living!

Just some helpful thoughts about living with chronic pain and spiritual fitness…