Chronic Pain and Late Nights

From A Place of Healing by J.E. Tada

Isaiah 43:18-19New International Version (NIV)

¹⁸ “Forget the former things;
    do not dwell on the past.
¹⁹ See, I am doing a new thing!
    Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?
I am making a way in the wilderness
    and streams in the wasteland.
I can't begin to describe to you how important these biblical reassurances about time have been to me in my recent battle with non-stop pain. If I though that I had a God who set aside the business of eternity from time to time simply to check on me every few years, I don't know how I'd survive. When you find yourself in chronic agony, life gets reduced to hours rather than days---and sometimes minutes and seconds. When I am in physical distress in the night, unable to sleep, unable to move, and unwilling to awaken Ken (again) to turn me, I need to know that God's concern and care for me is literally breath by breath, heartbeat by heartbeat, moment by moment.
 

Psalm 38:6-9New International Version (NIV)

⁶ I am bowed down and brought very low;
    all day long I go about mourning.
⁷ My back is filled with searing pain;
    there is no health in my body.
⁸ I am feeble and utterly crushed;
    I groan in anguish of heart.

⁹ All my longings lie open before you, Lord;
    my sighing is not hidden from you.

I am forever grateful that God is there with me throughout the nights. I do not know what it is about nights and pain, but the littlest noise wakes me. I usually spend a large portion of my night reading and copying passages out of my devotionals, the Bible, and then making my blog post, depending on my nausea. I suppose at night, there is a quietness that will not generally be disturbed, where "be still" and knowing God can fully happen. I know He is there, keeping me safe in His great arms, whatever I may face, whatever complaints I may make against the walk I have had to limp down. He has blessed me at least these last two weeks with much better pain control, which has allowed me the chance to do more things than I have been able to, and I am so grateful to have a small breathing space in my pain. 

I can go on because I know God can use broken instruments to make incomparable music. Whatever strings are broken in our lives--if we concentrate, if we apply what we know---we can still play beautiful music with what we have left. Sometimes you have to take what's left and coax out of life something new and different. When there's no light for your path and you follow Him through dark times, the volume and intensity of praise to God goes up many more decibles.

One of the things that broke my heart immensely with this RA stuff was my inability to do nursing. I have not given up on that dream, I pray and hope to return to nursing. I tried for over a month to do my job...but each day I was sicker and sicker, with my patients asking me if I was alright...I had to say no more. I miss it. There are new passions in the nursing field for me--pain and cancer and autoimmune. I don't know if that is the direction I am to go in--if nursing is even there as a doorway to walk through. Everything had opened up so wide for me to be a nurse, but now everything seems to have shut down. So, to the best of my abilities, I will try and be a housewife. That in itself is very limited. But I will try. I try every day to do something. There are those days where I am just too sick to do anything. Days I can barely drink water. 

God has made music with my broken self before. Sometimes it took years before I could see Him using it. I have some glimmers of what this weakness and brokenness has or could do...but I am not certain that what I think and possibly see is true. 

There are many days where I just sit quietly and cry. There are so many things I have lost with my RA, so many things others have lost with theirs. I am glad when I hear of someone who has RA that really doesn't affect them--I truly am glad! I am afraid of what is lost, and what could be lost. 

God has made music with me before. God has made music with so many broken people. He will make music again, I think...when the time is right.