Spiritual Fitness & Living With Chronic Pain

When you are trying to process painful difficulties, it’s really important to do two things: think and feel.
 
Too often many of us either focus to tightly on compartmentalizing our problems or we take the other route by emotionally overreacting to the circumstances given us. Being lopsided with either approach breeds unhealthy behaviors.
 
When dealing with adversity, like chronic pain, I’ve found that the “think and feel” approach works wonderfully.  For instance, there are days when I feel physically ill. It seems like every joint and every tissue in my body just hurts. Yet, if I allow this pain to dictate my attitudes and my behaviors throughout the day, this is when I usually experience depression and hopelessness. Self-pity causes doubt about my faith as well as demoralizing any optimism regarding my options about the next day. And similar destructive patterns occur when I only focus on thinking through my chronic pain, it seems like my heart becomes hardened and my compassion towards others runs very thin.
 
So to counteract deep attitudinal valleys of depression and cynicism, I allow myself to “feel” the pain, then after gauging its affects, I’ll strategically “think” about how to dispel fear and anxiety and how to persevere throughout the day. This approach of thinking is deeply rooted in faith, requiring God to renew my mind and to allow me to really discover who I am, what I have, what is meaningful, why I’m here and where my journey is taking me. He’ll do the same for you if you have faith in Him.
 
I encourage you to avoid being stuck regarding thinking too much about your pain or simply absorbing every negative feeling about your suffering. Persevering each day provides excellent benefits for your soul. 
 
Keep me on your favorites. For more about living with chronic pain, as well as spiritual healing, visit me at www.gordonselley.com

 
To your health, Gordon Selley

Does an apple per day actually keep the doctor away? I wonder if this old wives tale has some particle of truth hidden within it.
 
When dropping my HDL cholesterol level nearly 100 points, I credit the intake of pectin as having some influence with this remarkable change. Other factors also include taking Crestor-10 mg/daily, re-structuring my diet to organic foods, drinking larger amounts of water and brisk walking on the treadmill regularly.
 
Scientific evidence shows that fruits, like peaches, apples, currants and plums, are rich in pectin. Personally, I usually eat an apple around 5:00 pm each evening as my last snack of the day. Not only does this soluble fiber satisfy any hunger pangs, but I know that apple pectin is also effective in lowering cholesterol levels.
 
With all of the statistics pointing to a rising incidence of diabetes in the United States, it makes relative sense that an apple per day just might help keep the doctor away.
 
Keep me on your favorites. For more about weight loss motivation, visit me atwww.gordonselley.com

 
To your health, Gordon Selley

Oftentimes we relate to God based upon our needs, our personalities and our environment. And when living with chronic pain all of these things try to take precedence over the importance of having an intimate relationship with Him.
 
During many painful times for me, prayer seemed meaningless. It was as if I was falling back on random, emotional pleas for help. My humanness and weakness became more exposed. In hindsight, I probably had to go through this phase of doing something that appeared spiritually disciplined, for example, trying to pray for longer periods of time. As a result, I tried to pray from the core of my heart. It was like shooting arrows into the air, not knowing if my prayers might actually hit the intended target. It seemed like there were no immediate results in correlation to my petitions for help, discussions of confession and gut-wrenching sorrow for my own self-sufficiency.
 
Looking back upon those times, they almost don’t seem real. In essence, those times mimicked convoluted stages of grief. Prayer made me honest about myself and where my place was within this world.
 
Then I went through a profoundly layered process of unlearning what I had previously learned as a Christian. Pain tore down the walls of the meaningless things about the religious life. And prayer helped me to see God differently. Beforehand, I viewed pain as His way to forcefully make me to love and respect Him and to conform to rigid Church doctrine. But this was simply untrue. Through pain and prayer, I learned to love the things that really counted, which included the gift of my own humanity and the reality of God.
 
As I really grew in God, my prayer life became more deliberate, self-controlled and sober-minded. The focus of prayer was off my many needs and redirected toward the discovery of who I was and how was I really to please God.  Longer periods of prayer time no longer included spontaneous outbursts from my mind. Rather, they included direct contemplation and study of the scriptures, and then praying those verses into my heart. God was down deep within me, speaking to me and changing the way I thought, the way I processed things about life, and most importantly, the way we’re suppose to love.
 
So basically, the answer to my original subject title, “Does Prayer Help?” In the context of pain or otherwise, my response is an emphatic yes!
 
I willingly share my story with you so you can extract anything from it that you want. Hopefully, shared excerpts from my life will help you in your struggle of dealing with chronic pain or losing weight or overcoming obstacles.
 
Keep me on your favorites. For more about living with chronic pain, as well as spiritual healing, visit me at www.gordonselley.com

 
To your health, Gordon Selley

Just as greed and incompetence are vastly responsible for the economic down turn on Wall Street, so is gluttony and ignorance when it comes to the super-sized amounts of foods most Americans consume. Unlike other countries, Americans tend to consume higher amounts of animal-based foods, such as red meat, poultry and pork, which in effect, bring about increased risks for many types of diseases, such as diabetes, obesity and heart attacks.
Throughout my adult life, I have been part of the American dietary nightmare. I have literally loved to eat tenderloin filet steaks and lean ground chuck burgers. For me, this has always been a way to treat my body in a special way, regardless of the occasion. But in reality, my affinity toward animal-sourced products contributed to poor nutritional health that basically fought against my chronic, neuropathic pain condition.
 
Even though I knew the health benefits from changing my diet, there was pride of affluence in my choice of food groups. I had always remained firm to the idea that if I ate like a king, I would feel like a king and would be acknowledged as such in the presence of my friends. My ego was certainly influencing my eating behaviors and providing emotional comfort in the meantime. Once I quit being prideful about what I ate, then I began to “see” what I should eat because I believed in what I was doing. It was almost instantaneous the way the light turned on inside my head. Pride no longer blocked my vision about attaining better health.
 
If you’re currently struggling with your weight or you might be on the verge of becoming victim to serious diseases, I encourage you to put your pride at the door regarding improper eating, and then enter into a new place of curiosity about making real changes toward proper health. Don’t delay. Don’t deprive yourself the best of life. Affluence really isn’t about money, power or perception. Rather it is about spiritual richness and wholeness. 
 
As Mark Twain wrote, “On with the dance, joy be unconfined.”
 
Keep me on your favorites.  For more about weight loss motivation and spiritual growth, visit me atwww.gordonselley.com

 
To your health, Gordon Selley

Think of pain and suffering from a positive perspective. And since I’m an advocate of long-term weight management and exercise, please think of how a physical work out of your body compares to that of how your soul is stretched and challenged in the growth of its core.
 
For instance, as we stretch and challenge our muscles to get bigger and stronger through weight lifting (as an example), God does the same thing when challenging our souls through painful trials so that we can also get bigger and stronger. Physical exercise trains the internal and external parts of the body, while painful trials train our souls in godliness, purifying and cleansing our inner most being. Both of these disciplines keep our entire being on the road to better health and wholeness.
 
While I encourage you to recognize some of the benefits from pain and suffering, I also realize that not all forms of suffering necessarily provide therapeutic results. 
 
Nonetheless, if your soul is being strenuously exercised through trials, as most of us are during these turbulent times, I encourage you to finish your workout. In the end, you will be stretched beyond your current limitations. Your mind will be expanded to see things from different perspectives. After you persevere through painful adversities, your vision about the future will actually become brighter. Your willingness to accept change and to adapt to it through forward thinking will have you taking action for the better. 
 
At first, your small steps toward change might seem difficult. But as you continue your walk, things will become more involuntary and will actually not be as challenging when you face the obstacles of fear and difficulty. It’s kind of like being on the last phase of your exercise program. This is when you begin to slow down your heart rate, being able to see some positive results from your efforts. And as this exercise routine of trials pertains to your soul, this is when you’ll begin to understand yourself better in relationship to God and with regards to your overall purpose for living. Meaningless things will be eliminated from your life, giving importance to those things that are really most meaningful.

Keep me on your favorites.  Please click onto www.gordonselley.com for more information about living with chronic pain, as well as spiritual healing.

Let’s stay on this theme about vision…

Over twelve years or so, I can’t even count how many times I intended to lose weight. Usually on Sundays I’d plan to make huge changes with my diet, of course, I’d start this grandiose discipline on the next day. So then I’d sit down and have that last bowl of ice cream, being really serious about my resolve. As lunchtime rolled around on Monday, then I’d do something to violate my intentions of weight loss, like eating something I shouldn’t have or I’d end up eating twice as much as necessary. At best, my efforts to restrict my food intake or to makeover my diet might last a week or so, and then everything would eventually go awry. For some reason, I couldn’t remain focused on a longer term goal that I knew would benefit my poor health.

This destructive cycle repeated itself for years. My vision about losing weight actually affected my other senses in a negative way. Just the idea of trying to lose weight seemed so impossible that I would actually feel worse physically. More headaches, ringing in the ears, depression and irritability always seemed to follow. At that time vision meant nothing to me, except pointing out the fact that I never could accomplish anything without experiencing waves of failure.

Basically, I was trying to conform to the vision of weight loss. I’d dream about what my body might look like with fewer pounds. And at times I could envision this, at least momentarily, but practically, it seemed like I’d never be able to accomplish this feat.

What changed?

My vision about how I might look remained relatively the same. Yet my belief in the visionchanged radically. Because of chronic pain and the number of failed attempts to lose weight, I no longer believed in my own abilities. What once was of little difficulty, when younger, healthier, and physically active, was now seemingly impossible.

In essence, I began my “once-and-for-all” approach to lifestyle change by giving my entire body to God as a living sacrifice. This made sense within my beliefs about God. No longer was my vision narrowed to losing pounds. The focus was on believing. And from believing, this allowed me to walk out my vision.  The only future I knew that I would commit to is one in which I believed it would actually become a reality. Believing in the vision led to small, but steady, steps toward change. Just knowing or seeing your vision is not enough! Invest your body, soul and spirit into the process. From this active measure of belief, you will live out some great results.

Whether you weigh too much or you’re feeling lonely because of pain or trying to better deal with stress or trying to cope with financial challenges or perhaps feeling bitter because of unmet expectations about your life, there are times when you have to find new vision for yourself.

It’s a well known proverb, “where there is no vision, the people perish.” When you can’t see beyond yourself or your own circumstances, you’ll find that you will be held captive by your own perceived limitations.  This becomes your living reality. And of course, your limitations will inevitably create boundaries, which will shrink steadily as adversity hits you smack in the face. Needless to say, it’s these invisible boundaries that grow higher over time like barb-wired fence meant to keep you caged.  So easily, optimism gets swapped for hopelessness. Sound familiar?

It’s time for new vision for your life. I’m not talking about the kind of vision that is merely self-gratifying or can pay the immediate bills or something you think you can control because the vision is simple and small enough to accomplish. I’m talking about seeing yourself and your future differently from everyone else. I’m talking about creating a vision bigger than who you are right now.

For instance, if you have a belief in God, then I encourage you not to limit God’s creative ways for your life. Part of the wonder of God is his way in which he helps us to discover who we really are, including a closer look at the lives we could live or the type of people we could become.

Encumbrances, like suffering, disability, bankruptcy, family dysfunction, lack of education, just to mention a few, will always try to thwart your ability to dream and more importantly, to live out your dreams as reality. Everything you’ve failed at before or everything your insecure about or everything you fear will absolutely try to scare you back to the place where you no longer dream, where life becomes stagnant, where faith becomes complacent like a walk in the desert, and where the wish to completely give up becomes foremost of all, daring you to do something you will forever regret.

I’m here to tell you that you can erase these destructive thoughts from your way of living. I want you to know that God sees your life differently from anyone else.  And it is something very much better than you probably can imagine, even though many obstacles may be pressing against your abilities to cope.

He did this for me in the most darkened places of pain and major vocational loss. In order to discover a life worth living, God became essential to the process, giving me visions about doing something worthwhile, and to be changed personally from bad to better even against the backdrop of physical affliction.  My vision about myself and my future included forward thinking and putting the desired outcomes of dreaming into everyday application.  Dreaming and desiring became real points of reference for growth.  They didn’t remain as wish lists or short-term ways of denial or ways to falsely achieve a feeling of optimism. 

Instead, God showed me that dreaming and walking out the dreams were his way of participating in the process.  Faith was put into action.  It wasn’t a way to hype myself up.  It was a practical way to start where I was with the mess in my life and to deal with things without fear.  When you start your pursuit to something better and brighter, and God puts this into your mind, then count on experiencing great joy while you walk out your dreams.  It’s walking out your dreams that brings the most happiness, joy and contentment.  It’s a jump start to fulfilling something beyond your expectations, if you have any to begin with because of pain and suffering.

This is when I truly began to see the realness of God in my life as I witnessed his power to grow my character from bitterness and anger about pain to something much better, not only for myself, but also for my family and for everyone around me.  Living out my new life became contagious to everyone around me.  For instance, I lost 50 pounds, became more active and shared God’s ways of how he transforms us from nothing to something.  When they noticed this remarkable difference, they wanted what I had in God.

When you ask God to help create a new vision for your life, he will do so by showing you something greater than yourself. It seems like God already sees the desires for our lives. It’s a matter of us integrating with him to also see them, believe in them, and to live them out with adaptability and confidence!

Keep me on your favorites.  Please click onto www.gordonselley.com for more information about living with chronic pain, as well as spiritual healing.

Our brief getaway at a resort in Scottsdale, Arizona proved beneficial and very restful. Cherise and I had never spent time together in a climate in which the temperatures reached at least 105 degrees daily. It felt like we were in dry-heat sauna for most of our reprieve. 
 
Regardless, the desert climate positively affected our appetites. We were less hungry for heavier foods and instead, we craved more water, fruits and fish. So that’s exactly what we consumed. This eating pattern varies slightly from my normal intake; but on this trip, I was delighted from its weight loss benefits.
 
As a general rule, I avoid eating the same foods each day. I try to eat smaller sized portions of a variety of foods until the early evening, no later than 5:00 usually. As a result, I purposely break any eating habits that become mundane and routine. Personally, I believe by altering your diet regularly, you’ll probably improve your metabolism, in terms of increased insulin and fatty acid synthesis.
 
I would consider this a valuable tip in the overall scheme of long-term weight management. Don’t be afraid to mix up what you eat!

Just within our circle of friendships at least a half dozen are currently suffering with acute, debilitating low back pain – the kind of pain that prevents any activity, whether it be work, daily functioning or play. 
 
My heart deeply sympathizes with each friend, wishing that I could instantly take away their pain. But in reality, I can’t. In essence, the measure of sympathy is cheap; hence it provides little assistance in helping one to deal with outlandish pain.
 
So what happens when one turns to God when experiencing his or her own bout of severe pain? Does God also react similarly to us, providing sympathy and showing impotence to intervene? It certainly can feel this way at times, especially in the middle of extreme agony. I certainly have felt this way during some very low moments.
 
In retrospect, in the back of my mind, I expected him to provide the kind of triumph over disease that our Christian enterprise purports. And when this didn’t happen, of course, I experienced mountains of grief and disappointment. I began to question my entire belief system. As a result, I put more pressure upon myself to earn, in some way, his good graces of healing. It simply didn’t happen for me, and what I’ve discovered for many others as well. Where was God who I thought I knew so well? 
 
He wasn’t on the victorious mountaintop of health just sitting alone nor was he meandering in the heavenly realms with his angels. Looking inward and listening to the truth of his word, I found his incredible love in the midst of my suffering. He was smack dab in the middle of the pits with me. He never abandoned me. When he didn’t seem to be around, it took deeper levels of faith to find him. When I knocked on the door, he opened it. When I asked him for help, he offered himself first. Once I surrendered in faith to him, I could begin to really see passed the anguish and the fear I had felt.
 
Frankly, it was quite liberating to realize God was by my side regardless of the circumstances. His presence liberated me from fear, guilt and thoughts of giving up. Death no longer became an option for getting out of pain. For me, his role was not to relieve my suffering or to spare me from it. But instead, he enabled me to endure the pain as I was being reshaped.
 
So if you’re having difficulty even just moving because of pain, be assured. God is there with you. Most likely, your lives are being reinvented on your journey of life. I encourage you to give yourself to God fully, even when it hurts and doesn’t make sense to you. He is waiting on the other side of the door. So just knock in faith!

Keep me on your favorites.  Please click onto www.gordonselley.com for more information about living with chronic pain, as well as spiritual healing.

This morning has been rough for me. Whenever I progress forward with chronic pain, sometimes it feels as if I also take two steps backwards. And today is just one of those days. Do you ever experience something similar like this? Awake since 3:30 am with a headache, back pain and burning legs, not to mention fatigue.
 
So what will I do to cope? I will do what I know to be true. Instead of giving into self-pity and developing a defeatist attitude, I will walk through today’s adversity the best I can. Of course, the way I walk today is meant for today only.  The way I walk tomorrow, in terms of how I live out my life for that day, may be entirely different. I must consider each day as a gift of life.  In doing so, this makes it easier to get through the trials of today with renewed hope and realizing the load of pain is not too burdensome.
 
Whenever I start to think about my long walk of the past or I perseverate about the future, this is when hopelessness digs its heels into my heart. CS Lewis once wrote, “When trying to look into the future, you just may find a ‘No Trespassing’ sign.” So true… Looking into the future only creates additional anxiety, especially when chronic pain feels to heavy to begin with.

Keep me on your favorites.  Please click onto www.gordonselley.com for more information about living with chronic pain, as well as spiritual healing.