it Is Impossible

Notes from A Lifetime of Wisdom by J.E. Tada:

When you think about it, if our adversary can get us to focus on our past mistakes, wrong turns and wasted opportunities, he has stolen the present moment from us...if our enemy can keep us occupied with our past with our past or with our future, we lose grace, blessings and opportunities in the Now. 
---focusing on Pain or illness is a similar example of wasted time, although as equally hard to stop thinking about as brokenness. I can become so focused on my ra that everything washes away and it is all that exists. On the worst of the worst days it is perhaps more understandable, but I can still ask God for strength to fight the feelings of depression, irritation, pain and nausea. There is no need to go it alone. 

The weaker we feel, the harder we lean. The harder we lean, the stronger we grow....the main aim of God in the work of grace is "an even deeper knowledge of God, and an even closer fellowship with Him. Grace is God drawing us sinners closer and closer to Him". This is the ultimate reason...God permits heartache and complexities of one sort and another into our lives to ensure that we learn to hold onto Him fast.
---I equate this to the relationship between myself and my dog. In a way, I continuously ask and even demand that my dog give up normal dog but behavior. I do not want my dog to dig holes. Not because I do not want to let my dog have doggie fun, but because his holes may cause my horse to break it's leg, causing great damage. Or a cow may fall and break it's leg. I thus stop my dog from digging holes. I expect my dog to want to be with only me. I allow my dog to be with other dogs, and take delight in his fun with other dogs. But if my dog begins to focus only on other dogs, and create a pack mentality of doggie destruction, I will remove the dog from the pack in protection...while to the dog I have devastated him, even if I spend ultimately more time with the dog. But I have prevented the dog from worse harm, although he cannot see it. 

It is impossible (quadriplegic). You simply can't manage sweet patience and true joy while you're trying to find within yourself the stamina of courage to do so. You will fail every time. The courage, patience and the will to get up and face each day come from another source.Leaning...you will also begin to see how Grace relates to that increasingly rare and elusive state of being we call contentment. 
---I am just entering a time of increased.pain and sickness after four or five glorious days of being nearly pain free. I walked to the barn for the first time to see goat kids and the calf. I have not been to the barn in likely four months. The last time I went out that much I sobbed hysterically, because it was if I stepped out of coma...the season was fall, so much had changed...there were no flowers...it was a season of death, and I wished I was part of that season. I was still so mourning the great loses I had accepted...not just my ra, but many things I had avoided, like deaths in the family and other stresses. I simply couldn't take this. 
I still can't. It, as Joni says, is impossible. There is no earthly way anyone could take the constant tide of better-ish to horribly ill. There is no way. Once I began to cling desperately to God, crying to Him and clinging to Him at all hours, it became, becomes, easier...there are still days I scream silently to myself that this is impossible, and much like Joni did in her books, beg Him and why I have to face this too. Especially when I have faced many great battles...
So perhaps He is keeping me safe from the dog pack mentality. I do not know. I know it breaks my heart and nearly makes me throw up considering 60 years of this suffering...with possible little to no relief. I have read and watched the stories of my fellow sufferers the immune system is indeed impressive...I wonder we get colds etc at all.!!

By day the Lord directs His love, at night His song is with me--a prayer to the God of my life. Ps 42:8

For this God is our God for ever and ever; He will be our guide even to the end. Ps 48:14