Monday, January 19th - Zero: Pain

Pain is an interesting thing. There are lots of different forms: mental, physical, spiritual. It can be sharp, stabbing, dull, aching. It can be quick, like ripping a band-aid off, or long term like an old bone break that just heals wrong.

I've been close friends with pain for most of my life. I can remember suffering horrible headaches as a young child, and I remember pain in my legs but it's much more abstract. As I grew older I had the bad fortune to have bad female problems, ulcers, and, always, the headaches. From my early 30's on, pain has become a constant companion. I still have the headaches, brought on by the slightest smell of someone's cologne or perfume or cleaning products, etc, etc. But the worst of all is the pain in my lower body joints. I thought it was bad, but I found out this week that it's so bad that I didn't even notice that I have a rib out of place. Crazy stuff, there.

On tonight's House episode there was a young father who tried to kill himself because of the overwhelming burden of living with constant pain. Interesting because House also lives with the pain on a constant basis. Both of them were at a point where the drugs were no longer working well for them. That's a fear, as well as the fear of what the drugs do to your kidneys and liver. I could sympathize with the father, because I have often wondered what's the difference between living in a constant drug haze and being hooked up to a machine? Of course, it's House, so I knew they would fix him! YAY, House..

A person learns to live with pain, usually. As far back as the Apostle Paul with his 'thorn in the flesh'. Some people take drugs, some people become shut-ins, some people become alcoholics, and some people become mean. Pain affects those that love those people, too. It's not fair to them, especially to the spouse. Because while we save all our 'good' moments for our co-workers and friends, we keep the venom for those in our house. I am devasted by the cruelty of that truth, but like so many of our own faults, I feel powerless, most of the time, to change it. It's one of those things that for some crazy reason I feel like it's up to me to fix, like I am so ashamed of it that I can't give it over to God. I feel like a little kid in the Ball Pit. You know the one, she scoops up an armful of those balls and loses her balance. Down she goes and can't get back up. You, on the outside, tell her to drop the balls and she can get up, but her desperation to hang on to those balls outweighs everything else so she struggles and struggles, but just sinks further down. I wallow in the Ball Pit on a regular basis. Because admitting that the pain exists means I am weak. Weakness is something I have learned from an early age to be completely and totally ashamed of.

How crazy is that. I can admit my weakness here, on this blog, but in the intimate conversation with my Father, my Creator, my weakness - my pain - is off-limits! In some way, I think part of the reason is that I feel like I deserve it.

There is a reason for everything, and similar to Paul, I feel like if pain weren't my constant companion my life would be almost too good. My pride would be an enormous hurdle. It definitely keeps me humble, because I have to watch my temper always. I also have started to have to admit that I can't do it all myself. I need help doing small chores and activities. That's big for me, cause I have always been a solitary person. I would have made a terrific monk, probably. But, that wasn't God's plan, obviously.

Praise God that He doesn't give up on us! My prayer is that I will get it right sooner rather than later.

Peace, Love, and GOD,
Tracy

Monday, January 12th - Hero: Bill Connor

This is a guy I met on an airplane last year. I don't really remember which flight, except that it was a connection flight to Dallas.

I remember him though. He was a very nice guy who was with the Army Air Guard. He lives in San Antonio and that is what got us to talking. San Antonio is one of my favorite cities!

We talked to whole flight. He had daughters and we talked about them, and we talked about religion, but we mostly talked about traveling. He traveled alot, too.

In the course of conversation I mentioned how much I loved Argentina and Costa Rica which got us to talking about the fact that you can drive Highway 1 (or 101) starting at the northern most tip of the states all the way down to the tip of Patagonia in Argentina. That led us to talk about the book 'The Motorcycle Diaries' which chronicles a couple of young guys journey along this highway.

So guess what shows up in my mail today??? A DVD copy of the movie 'The Motorcycle Diaries' from Bill. He also sent a letter telling about the Hurricane work his unit has been doing and some training videos they have been shooting.

So, Bill Connor is my Hero today for reminding me that while travel can be a chore and sometimes unpleasant, there are some really great people out there - just waiting to be met.

Peace, Love, and GOD,
Tracy