Living With Chronic Pain & Spiritual Transformation

I wanted to leave a brief explanation as to my intermittent absence from crafting some blog posts.  Currently, I am writing a book and I am devoting my time to this writing ministry.  As a result, I have intentionally taken a sabbatical from the original approach regarding www.gordonselley.com.  Rest assured though, God is molding the foundations of this ministry, as I continue to step out in faith into His arms.

Nonetheless, I am going to leave you a draft portion of my book introduction.  Please feel to read this to get an idea about what I’m writing about, and feel free to offer intercessory prayers on my behalf.  Just so you know, I will not be offering other public renderings of this book project.  So…please enjoy this sample!

Introduction:

In terms of human behavior, a gigantic chasm has always existed between the “have” and the “have-nots.” The people who “have” that special thing seem to know how to live on “top of the rock,”? even when the storms of life strike violently against them.  Regardless of what opposes their path, they remain unshakable, knowing how to bounce back and discover rich treasures along their adventurous journey.  Basically, the people with the “have” portions in their soul instinctively roll up their sleeves to extract the good from the bad; and even when slowed down occasionally due to painful hardships, their efforts seem to translate into abundant living.

On the other hand, the story about the “have-nots” is much less inspirational.  In fact, it’s very bleak.  Their foundation comes into question when confronted with the prevailing winds from the storm.   Oftentimes, their resolve against adversity gives way because of a lack of understanding and an apparent inability to adjust to change.  The “have-nots” possess a very different outlook from their counterparts.  They get entangled in the miry quandaries rather than seeing hope and finding a new way to live vivaciously despite their circumstances.

One of the key points about this book is that anyone can become a “have!” After all, the underlying truth about transformed living is not reserved for the few who are privileged nor does it betray those who reside in the smaller places of society.  The real motive behind transformed living is that anyone can gain enlightenment in pursuit of the ultimate life.

This book is a compilation of my personal thoughts about real life transformation. It’s not a message that indicts the “have-nots,” nor do I precipitously applaud those who “have” the special intangibles to overcome obstacles.  Personally, I know what it feels like, and to practically live like a “have-not.” And on the flip side, after undergoing real life transformation, I’m keenly aware of what it means to live the fully transformed life – when radical change for the better actually happens – when our earth-shaking confessions break the chains from our inconsolable parts – and when our old and tattered nature is miraculously converted into the new and improved.

Make no mistake about it.  To experience transformation is not for the faint of heart.  It takes incredible courage to see life from different perspectives, and then to actually take that initial step into this newly-formed reality.  To abide in this place and to progress forward with the second step is even more daring, and so on down the path.

Moving from old habits to establishing new patterns of living does not happen by mere coincidence.  Neither is this positive life change something that can be designed by exact blueprint or therapeutically corrected by self-help seminars or entirely accomplished by our own insistence of will.  Of course, some underlying attitudinal principles, such as inspiration, perseverance, self-control and discipline, help to get the ball rolling on this new course and clearly distinguish the “have” from the “have-nots.” Yet, these self-improvement efforts are insufficient to break down the massive strongholds of being deeply wounded or to finish the marathon of what it means to be fully transformed.

My story is no different from anyone else who has fallen from the top of the rock into the pit of utter despair.  After sustaining severe auto injuries, I underwent four neck surgeries and hundreds of medical procedures and narcotic medications.  The end result is that the treatments only did part of the job.  I was left with the nasty residuals of neuropathic pain – not the kind of pain like stubbing your toe or burning your finger.  Instead, this was the kind of pain that doesn’t stop or seem to get better, the kind of pain that you can’t help but wonder, “Will I ever be able to truly live a normal life again?” This type of pain seriously challenges your physical tolerance, as well as your psychological ability to cope.

And this was just the beginning of things to come.  The torrential rains of chronic pain poured unnecessarily for years, and the storm didn’t end there.  Everything about whom I was, including my professional career, my material means, my workouts, my self-worth and my beliefs, were shaken to the bone.  Before any of the clouds had lifted, I complicated matters even further, as I gained way too many extra pounds in an attempt to plug the leaking holes in my heart.

Foundationally, my life was but sinking sand.  I found myself stuck in the muddy clay, unable to get my footing on dry enough ground to climb out of my hole.  I just kept slipping and then falling on my face every time I tried to fix my stubborn problems.

By our very nature, we desire life and we crave it abundantly.  Yet, when we’re shattered and tired and lost, the place of higher ground seems like an illusion to our broken senses.  It’s no different than crawling on our knees in the desert for a drink of water, only to find a mirage of false hope.  I thirsted for righteousness, thought it was in my grasp, but came up empty every time I put this reality to the test.  Instead, when I thought I had reached the top of the rock, either I fell backwards from a cleft or I’d have to climb even higher, never really knowing how to get where I thought I needed to go.

The place of life can turn into a place of darkness where the truth gets submerged under several layers of self-delusion as a result of being broken.  To cope, we try to find as many remedies to relieve our pain as are readily available.  And without flinching, we reach for the nearest philosophical or spiritual ideologies to set us back on the path of vitality.  But oftentimes, we take the route of the “have-nots,” as we end up embezzling false ideas about who we are or we addictively engage in unhealthy behaviors to try to soothe the aching wounds of our hurting souls.

Nouwen wrote, “What is your pain?  It is the experience of not receiving what you most need.  It is the place of emptiness where you feel sharply the absence of the love you most desire.”? Have you wandered about in this place?  Feeling neglected of what you most need?  I surely have.

None of us want to spend time in a place of unforgiving pain and abandonment.  It seems as if we’ll do anything to experience the well-springs of life, where the rivers of hope and renewal actually flow.  Yet realistically, very few of us know how to move from the mirage of an oasis to the streams of living water.  Or if we do, then our brokenness speaks stronger than our willingness to pursue what is really needed most for our lives.

Frankly, I desire to meet you, the reader, in that place where we hide when we’re broken and stripped and have experienced a real crisis of faith.  I want to offer you a cup of water since you’re thirsty.  I wish to share with you the mysteries behind the transformed life.   And in a nutshell, I want to help guide you on the seemingly unendurable path to freedom and newness and self-discovery.

Christian or not, we share a common link about brokenness, which I believe, unites our lives in a very curious way.  We really do not have to compare the severity of our wounds.  We already know what lies in the secret place of our suffering.  In fact, we connect because we’re familiar with that place of pain – where we’ve been powerless to heal our wounds – where we’ve been held hostage against our will – where we’ve been stuck for too long and eventually have surrendered to the reality of what it means to live like the “have-nots” of this world. 

Being at the bottom is a place where we’ve become more accustomed to pain than we have known about our true selves.  In effect, our blindness about our true identity is actually found in our uncertainty regarding our beliefs, rather than on our ability to see the disappointments about our own lives.  So the double-pronged question exists: How much truth will we allow ourselves to bear? And as apprentices of brokenness, are we willing to surrender our old habits for renewed ways of living?

To be a guide, I had to first climb out of my hopelessness to then travel along the unpredictable path of transformation before making any recommendations to others.  The voices of the world – cultural philosophies, pious religiosity, democratic systems, lifestyle ideologies, as well as friends and acquaintances – tried to persuade me against this arduous journey.   When I had no belief about myself, I had to find it somewhere else.  When I experienced miserable bouts of depression, I needed some light to guide me out of darkness.  And when I had traumatic setbacks, I needed to hear a voice of encouragement to continue onward.  Regardless of what my needs were, the ways of the world refused to furnish any helpful advice about how to get to the top of the rock.

Nevertheless, I knew I felt called out of my pit of destruction.  The voice of God was faint, but its prompting was powerfully persuasive.  From out of the sludge, I knew I needed to rely on the power – the same power available to you – that was pulling me up.  It was radically changing my mind about the world around me.  Moreover, it was supplying nourishment for my soul that I had not experienced in a very long time.  Eventually, the mirage began to turn into an oasis.

Standing alone, weak and willing to surrender, I was at the crossroads, wondering which direction to go.  The inner tugging was undeniable as to which route to take.  As a result, I simply obeyed, as I ventured out on the less-traveled pathway – the difficult one full of unburied pain, flabby cellulite and negative attachments.  Regardless of how narrow the path appeared, I began to put my trust in the power that was pulling me from total despair onto solid footing.

Because we can intuitively identify with each other because of our painful experiences, it’s not farfetched to put ourselves into each other’s shoes and imagine the challenges of what it is like to be restricted from reaching our potential.  On the other hand, to see in the opposite direction and to actually take those next daring steps toward real recovery requires quite a bit of trust in the unseen.

Therefore, I want you to contemplate another perspective aside from the limitations of pain and brokenness.  I’m asking that you put yourself into my shoes.  And after you’ve tried on my thoughts for awhile, then extract what you need to begin your own journey of being transformed.  I encourage you to walk from old to new in a brand-new pair of shoes.

My story is just beginning.  It’s chalk-full of life-changing truths for individual suffering and for morbid obesity.  The ending can only be described as real life transformation. But the steps in between is where the rubber meets the road.  It is where I held on to truth and chose to walk through the wall of fire against my life.  It is where deliberate, single-minded focus laden with child-like faith carried me through the towering flames.

At times, the challenges to control a broken-down body and an insatiable appetite seemed insurmountable.  Yet, there is a point where we press beyond our natural points of resistance.  There is a place beyond our own version of pain and darkness.  And undoubtedly, there is a voice calling us into the unfolding realities of love.  Are you willing to follow – to see what lies beyond the wall of fire in all of our lives?

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

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 transformation.  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 transformation.  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 transformation.  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 transformation. 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 transformation. 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 transformation. 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 transformation. 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 transformation.

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 transformation 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.