Lately, my pain experience has been much like playing that arcade game where you hold a hammer and wait for a thing – sometimes an artificial mole, sometimes something else – to pop up from one of the many holes on the game playing board. When you see the “thing,” you’re supposed to hit it with the hammer, driving it back down the hole and scoring points when you do. Seems simple, and it seems as if it would be easy to win.

Alas…

No sooner do you drive one mole/thing down into its hole, but another pops up on another part of the board. Okay, you think, I’ll get that one, too. But, as you reach over with your hammer, you notice a third mole thing pop up from a different hole. And a fourth. 

No matter how much you work at it, you’re playing a losing game. The pain, like those mole things, won’t go away, but rather seems to relocate as soon as you get one area even moderately under control.

Of course, I’m not doctor, and we all have to work with our docs to cope as best we can with the physical and psychological parts of our pain.

But the spirit – now, there’s the part that can be more difficult. Why? Because it can become easy to get so frustrated that you throw down your mole-thing-hammer and give up, letting the spirit curl up inside and retreat. Yes, easy, but I try to work around it.

I fill up every “hole,” every area where there is minimal or no pain, with gratitude – praising and thanking God for the relief there, specifically there.  I use the recognition of relief, however faint, in some parts of the body to turn into faith that some lessening is possible, and I trust that this could “spread,” just as, sometimes, the pain can spread.

In short, when I feel frustrated that pain won’t completely go away and it seems as if I’m playing a losing game, I give my spirit something else to do, something positive, and this helps me tremendously as I go back, yet again, to my medical team, treatment protocols, and other tools.

When the spirit is busy with pouring forth its goodness, it cannot turn sour! It cannot retreat!

Peace,

Maureen