Spiritual Fitness & Living With Chronic Pain

Listen for a second…Do you hear the panic around you? Many people are furiously scrambling around, pondering about how to deal with some of the horrendous problems that life has thrown their way. Everything feels out-of-whack for our unsuspecting communities. Basically, it appears as if things don’t fit as neatly as they should within the scheme of life these days.

For instance, it seems like I hear many stories of people who are my age – around the 50-mark – who are essentially starting over with their lives. Retirement is simply a fading idea, another dream dashed against the financial realities in which we live.

Tragedy in nearly every form has literally destroyed the fabric of their existence, like where to live, what to do, how to deal with painful affliction and how to reconstruct when feeling out of place, just to mention the short list. Life was supposed to get easier, wasn’t it? Not so for many who are bewildered.

I encourage you not to panic like so many others. You’re not expected to solve your quagmire of problems with one-stop miraculous solutions. People do not live or die based on making only one decision to remedy several problems or to speed up the recovery process. Rather, a certain pattern of life is determined by a succession of decisions.

When trying to tackle gigantic problems, like the ones we face currently, the challenges aren’t necessarily to find the perfect solution or to get things back to the ways of yesterday; but rather, the mark set before us is to counteract fear and intimidation with an open mindset toward wisdom. One-time decisions aren’t really enough to solve the enormity of gunky problems left for our clean-up. On the other hand, the ways of wisdom promise to deliver us from our bad circumstances and also, to give us eventual redemption.

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When living in chronic pain, it is very easy to focus on the darker things of life instead of on the gift of living out each day with an attitude of abundance.

To glean the most, I propose the following: Maximize the “good.” Starve the “bad.”

To complain in the midst of any long, drawn-out trial is simply making “less” of who Christ is within us. It is during these times of spiritual blindness that we must decrease so that He can increase. He who is within us is greater that he who is in the world.

We must fully believe in the power of the Holy Spirit to overcome periods of spiritual discouragement. Think of it this way. As we grow in faith, the Holy Spirit purifies our minds about the real image of God. In essence, this same Spirit can cure our periods of doubt and discouragement. It is vital to contemplate about the true nature of God. Regardless of our circumstances, the nature of God is entirely “good,” even when things do not go as planned.

To cure spiritual blindness is to begin to see things as Christ sees them.

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Q: I guess one question I have is how did you go about rebuilding your social life when you lost

friends because of chronic pain?

A: Regarding the development of new friendships, I never imposed my physical/emotional hardships upon the people in which I engaged.  It seemed as if most people already knew of my story, so it was pointless to dwell on my own personal challenges. Basically, I always focused the attention on things that were uplifting for others, regardless of how I felt.

I think part of the equation for starting new friendships involves just that, starting…Most people will not understand your chronic pain scenario nor do they really want to get involved with your additional hardships.  Personally, I recommend that you look at social networking differently, probably less religiously since I found the religious more discriminatory against those who live with pain as compared with others.

In your quest to begin some newfound friendships, start out slowly, but courageously…It’s going to take faith and huge risks of being rejected.  And since you have a history of abuse and painful affliction already, additional pain like rejection might seem like too much to handle.  But the truth is; you can.  Start out by talking with people, in general.  Then develop commonality.  I think you’ll be surprised that you’ll see other interests develop within yourself which are separate from the drama of chronic pain…

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Today’s blog is concise and to the point. I’ve received a few comments from people who are trying to stuff their physical and emotional pains in order to cope with the realities of their life. I certainly understand why people protect themselves against additional hurts, but I’d like to warn these individuals that this self-protective measure will cause additional heart pain to erupt down the road.

To elaborate on my blog yesterday, it is essential to focus intently on belief in order to see the depth of healing that is found in the manuscript of life. So when we compartmentalize our pains to preserve ourselves from additional hurts, we inevitably create further boundaries from seeing the intrinsic nature of God. This form of self-protection clouds our vision about how to live a better life. It blocks us from seeing the infinite side of Christ, as well as receiving the prescriptive qualities from His abiding love. Our wholeness is not built upon our ability to make our own broken parts to conform to a perceived sense of harmony. Instead, and by faith, our wholeness occurs because of our full belief in Him.

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Pain…Pain…Pain…How do some people who live with chronic pain still envision a bright future while many others slowly but surely fall into a dark, depressive resolve? If this question conjures up ideas about having more self-resiliency or self-control or self-determination to counteract the powerful forces of pain, then it’s important to get back to the basics to understand what it means to pursue better living against adversity.

Pain tends to cause each one of us to give up on the pursuit for better living. Its nature tears apart any harmony between our body, soul and spirit. While we consciously try to keep our parts intact in order to soar above the clouds, pain does the opposite, knocking us down from our pursuits toward fulfillment, accomplishment and happiness.

As we already know, pain comes in all forms. We might not be able to see its neurological impulses with the human eye. But we can certainly measure pain medically-speaking, and more importantly, we can see its devastation upon the human condition. Quite frankly, chronic pain seems cruel at times. Yet, this does not mean that we have to give up on living life to its fullest.

To live life abundantly, we must be able to “see” what this means in terms of our expectations. Usually, we pursue the better parts of life by moving toward things which bring us joy. And when pain interferes with our vision, we tend to drop everything in which we place our hope.

But to really live, we must be able to see. When we place our vision on things around us, we capture very limited views about how to live effectively. From this myopic perspective, the balance of the parts is critical for our sense of stability and vitality. So if we live our life based on what we see and how things line up correctly in the scheme of the universe, then pain certainly disrupts order and any sense of self-actualization.

Nonetheless, this is where God begins to renew the mind of man through His perspective of vision. It starts with Himself. God does not require the exact harmony of things for Himself to remain and to live within perfect unity. There are no contradictions within God. His infinite qualities communicate the divine aspect to man through His Son.

We can live because we can see how to live by the example of Christ. Things of pain and brokenness are made whole through belief. We can see hope through Christ. We really can’t find hope through ongoing destructiveness. Our ability to see better living occurs because of belief. It is our belief that allows us to dream and to envision and to hope, which lures us on the road to better living.

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From what I’ve observed very few embrace the fact that the fear of the Lord is the fountain of life. What do you think of when contemplating the fear of the Lord? For this past week I’ve had a severe strain of the flu. And normally I don’t associate the fear of the Lord with illness. Yet because of my sickness, I was reminded of what it felt like being completely emptied of personal sufficiency. My acute sense of fatigue awakened the blinders over my heart – once again.

To me, it’s plain to see how the fear of the Lord creates the feeling of self-defeatism against any measure of human pride and self-fulfillment. But more importantly, when down at the bottom, it’s also fascinating to witness how His loving right hand reaches out for the downtrodden, lifting them freely to a place of comfort.

Though the fear of the Lord definitely sparks absolute dread, the healing portion of fear emerges with great evidences of wisdom and love. Though the flu aggravated other neuropathic pain syndromes within my body, I’m glad I had the opportunity to “live” according to the Spirit during this unpleasant past week.

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Even though I offer many insights about how to live with chronic pain, I want you to know this fact. I also struggle with difficult days. And when I struggle mightily, I sometimes get discouraged as easily as you do. And when I do, I find myself disappointed with my own emotional reactions to things I’ve dealt with previously.

Pain is something that really can’t be perfectly conquered if chronic and reoccurring. Therefore, disappointment tries to usher us into the corridors of self-pity – that’s for sure. The process to walk through painful trials is filled with ongoing challenges, feelings of disappointment as well as feelings of accomplishment, regardless of the size.

Pain always reminds me about my own weaknesses, beating against any extra energy I have mustered for the day. At this juncture, even if I meander back and forth for a few hours, I try to forget the painful emotions associated with chronic suffering. And instead, I focus on thinking about the brighter meaning of self-development between this marvelous connection of the nature of God and me. This one fact alone always seems to pull me from the gutter of self-pity, inevitably fueling my attitude to continue to run the race of life.

Keep me on your favorites.  For more about living with chronic pain and spiritual fitness visit me at www.gordonselley.com.

Just because hardship and disappointment tends to cloud our vision does not mean that we need to go to an optometrist to see more clearly about how to live better. While others might help us to renew our thinking about things and how to improve upon our circumstances, this does not necessarily mean that we will gain better vision.

To grow in vision means this…It means we must begin to discover what we will not initially see within our physical surroundings. And it means that we need to understand the unseen things without reducing them to something of lesser meaning or to something predictable and manageable for our controlling interests. This commonly seen pattern defeats the purpose of developing a deeper vision about life.

To grow in vision means to grow by faith in catching a clearer glimpse of what the spiritual world actually represents and how it impacts our entire being, not just our lives but those around us as well. As we grow in vision, we will also grow in the power of faith. Tozer writes,

The yearning to know what cannot be known, to comprehend the incomprehensible, to touch and taste the unapproachable, arises from the image of God in the nature of man.

Keep me on your favorites.  For more about living with chronic pain and spiritual fitness visit me at www.gordonselley.com.

Lately, I’ve been communicating about the importance of being integrally connected with Jesus; metaphorically speaking, Him as the vine and we who believe as the branches. The eminence of this nourishing relationship cannot be understated. For from this connection comes forth divine transformation that exemplifies the perfecting love between an infinite God and finite men and women. As a result, we’re made into the “likeness” of Christ. This absolutely blows my mind as well as any comprehension I have about the bountiful knowledge of God.

So what is God’s will for us? Edmund Soper aptly writes, “For Jesus, the will of the reborn (spiritually-converted) man was identical with the will of God. There was no effort; it was no question of keeping commandments. The member of the kingdom did the will of God because he embodied the will of God.”

Give everything you’re holding onto for Him to transform, including everything about your body, soul and spirit…This is His will for you…

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Have you ever noticed the dead branches that have fallen from a tree? While their color might be muted brown or perhaps a few leaves appear withered, this does not deter you from recognizing that the fallen branches actually “belong” to the tree.

Think about your own faith, as a branch engrafted into the life-giving tree. Although the tree and its branches endure the arduous trials of weather, wind, frost, heat, insects, animals and the like, the life-giving connection between the tree and its roots with its branches nourishes the entire structure.

The same applies with your faith. Your faith binds you to the tree of life. And while the trials of life might test your faith, you don’t have to be one of the fallen branches on the ground which looks deadened and brown and unnourished.

In the religious world, this condition is called apostasy, in which people who belong to the Body fall away from their faith. While Christ preserves their spirits, their lives on earth experience the losses of unnourished disconnection because of lack of faith.

Just because you might experience horrendous pain or are confronted with difficult trials, I encourage you to remain connected with the tree of life about your faith. Allow your entire being to receive its nourishment from Him who created you as a part of His connectedness…

Keep me on your favorites.  For more about living with chronic pain and spiritual fitness visit me at www.gordonselley.com.