healing

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When Someone You Love has Chronic Pain

A decade ago I suffered a bulging, herniated disc in my back. It took months to get in to see a specialist, get a diagnosis, and find a treatment plan that worked to heal my body. For a year I dealt with constant, moderate-to-severe pain in my lower back, hips, and right leg.

Within weeks of my injury, I hardly recognized my life. The pain upstaged everything with its constant nagging. Sitting was particularly excruciating so my world shrank to a ten-mile radius around my home. My otherwise sharp and creative brain was scrambled into an unrecognizable slop. Sometimes the pain was so bad that I had trouble finishing sentences. My joyful, focused, and friendly personality morphed into something more impatient and irritable, always distracted, and often discouraged. Engaging with cherished friendships and hobbies became work, and that made me feel ashamed and frustrated.

A new back injury sustained this summer has me thinking of that dastardly year. As I make another slow and difficult climb toward wellness, I find myself drawing on lessons learned a decade ago. Coincidentally, I have several friends struggling with chronic pain right now, so it’s time to resurrect the “When Someone You Love” series. Here are some thoughts and tips on caring for people with chronic pain.

Believe in Pain You Cannot See
Unfortunately, we humans often only pick up on, and respond to, obvious signs of suffering: scabs and angry bruises, someone grimacing or limping, a limb wrapped in a brace or cast. Physical signs of pain trigger our compassion and helpfulness. But consider this—there are hundreds of conditions that cause physical pain which are invisible to others.

It can be difficult to accept that someone is in pain if you can’t see changes or limitations. So here’s your first opportunity to care well—believe your loved one when they say they are in pain. Tell or show them that you believe them. Ask how you can make adjustments or accommodations to make daily life more manageable for them.

Affirmation over Easy Answers
For many, chronic pain leads to challenging side effects: isolation from beloved friends and activities, irritability, physical and emotional fatigue, and loss of mental sharpness. Simple, everyday tasks become arduous challenges. Getting dressed winds you like running a 5k. Writing a daily report has the gravity of a dissertation. When you roll this nasty jumble of side effects together, you’re left feeling discouraged and disconnected. Less alive. Less you.

If one of your beloveds is in pain, then YOU are one of the best caregivers they could find. You’re even better than their doctors because you know who they are underneath all this pain. You can see what has changed and what has not. So, in real moments, tell them how you see their spirit or their strength shining through the pain. Have they done or said anything lately that displays their unique personality? Simply letting them know how and when you see them will be life-giving.

And please, steer clear from clichés or easy answers like “it’ll get better soon” or “God won’t give you more than you can handle” or “focus on the positive.” Caregiving clichés are like wielding a velvet hammer. Despite good intentions, they make suffering people feel like they are failing or inadequate, and they often amplify feelings of weakness. With some careful thought you’ll be able to do something much better—speak words that are true about them. Words that are empathetic and truly soothing.

Connect with Coping Skills & Self-care
Back in my chaplaincy days, I often asked my patients to reflect on times of pain or difficulty in their past. With those in mind, I’d then ask what worked, and what didn’t. How did they face those challenges head on? What things helped them get through an hour, a day, or a week? What kinds of practical support did they need from others?

This reflective process acknowledges that they are an important voice (even an expert voice) in their own care, and it reminds them that they already have valuable internal resources from which to draw.

Chronic pain may be new for your loved one, but you’ll find that coping skills and coping support are amazingly flexible. They tend to adapt to new scenarios. Help your loved one remember what’s worked in the past and encourage them to try it out now.

Other than coping skills, chronic pain sufferers need to practice self-care. Over the past three months, I’ve spent hours resting, and icing and heating my hurting back—otherwise known as caring for myself—but I’m often emotionally drained. Self-care for me right now is not the things I do everyday to get through the pain. Self-care is doing the things that nurture my soul when I’m healthy.

Last week I had what I call “a good pain day” so I went out, bought a movie ticket and a lime Diet Coke, and settled into the local theater’s leather recliner. This is one of my favorite me-time things to do. Unfortunately, the chair was too soft for my back so I didn’t make it through the whole film before I went home, but I was sublimely happy that I got out of the house and enjoyed half of a good movie. That outing restored my positivity for several days.

What does your loved one normally do to nurture their body/soul/spirit when they are healthy? Can they continue that self-care routine despite their pain? If so, encourage them stay engaged in these things.

Beware Treatment Suggestion Fatigue
Treatment Suggestion Fatigue is my evil pet name for a very real thing for chronic pain sufferers. When we share about our struggles with family and friends, these well-meaning people barrage us with advice.

“Have you heard of Dr. Adams and his revolutionary treatment?”

“Have you ever tried cryotherapy?”

“You should ask for vicodin. That’s the good stuff.”

“I just read about the wonders of fish oils!”

“My grandmother’s chicken soup cures all.”

“Physical therapy helped me after I broke my leg.”

Please hear this, friends. You all have different opinions of what is best, and what worked for you or your grandma. But what worked for you might not work for me. The pain of a broken leg is very different from nerve pain. You might rush toward prescription narcotics, but I may have five very important reasons why I won’t or can’t use them. So be cautious of how and when and what you suggest.

As a rule of thumb, ask a question before you make a suggestion. The questions “what have you tried?” and “are you looking for suggestions?” are far more caring than any sentence that starts with “you should try” or “for me the answer was…” Pain sufferers will hear the difference in your words. Asking questions first shows that you respect them as the intelligent, intuitive keeper of their body.

Special Note: When Chronic Pain is Here to Stay
Sadly, there are many painful conditions and diseases that last for years, even lifetimes. While most of us will celebrate an end to our chronic pain, for some pain will be part of their new normal. This type of chronic pain is a different beast altogether and deserves its own post, but I want take a moment to address this reality.

Overall, I encourage you to be compassionate — both to your loved one and to yourself — to be flexible, and to be keen listeners.

I’ve noted that dealing with pain effects mood and personality. It’s also true that long-endured struggles tend to change us. When chronic pain becomes lifetime pain, it will likely alter your beloved’s personality permanently. (Pause and read that last sentence again.) You’ll need to wrestle with and accept that they may never return to the same person you knew before the pain came. They may be more irritable, less positive, or have a new edge to their humor. But don’t give way to discouragement! The changes won’t be all bad.

My bouts with chronic pain have made me more sensitive and compassionate to others in pain. They’ve helped me let go of my need to be in control. I’ve learned to acknowledge and accept limitations, to be kinder to myself, to ask for help, and to really believe that needing help doesn’t mean I’m weak or pathetic. It means I’m human.

All of this ultimately encourages and challenges me to entrust more of my life to the all-powerful, loving God I worship. And in doing that, I become more whole.

May God bless you, caregiver, with abundant grace and peace. May you use the overflow to nurture your beloved’s health — body and soul. I pray for swift healing and for many moments of joy in the waiting.

Much love,
Corrie

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What To Do with all of your Feelings about the Stanford Rape Case

Like many of you, I’ve been reading the daily articles about the Brock Turner rape case. And like many of you, I have strong feelings about Emily Doe’s rape and the fallout. Here’s what is churning in my gut… Compassion for Emily Doe’s pain. Disgust over Turner’s senseless act of sexual violence. Deep angst toward his apparent ignorance of the real issue—his reprehensible rape of a woman—and his lack of repentance for his crimes. Anger at Turner’s attorney for victim blaming during the trail. Outrage at Judge Persky’s sentencing and rationale. Helplessness that we live in a world so selfish and broken that any person would rape another.

All of these emotions leave me feeling very raw and weary. A small part of me wishes that Emily’s story didn’t affect me. I wish I could ignore this whole atrocity, turn away from the news, and protect myself from these terrible feelings; but I can’t. Thankfully, the larger part of my heart doesn’t want to turn away because Emily’s story is important and personal to me.

I live and work three miles from Stanford University. I may have passed Emily in Trader Joe’s. I may have steered my car around Brock Turner as he cycled to class on campus. These young people are my neighbors. Palo Alto is the community where I minister.

These events also feel personal because I worked with college students for six years. The things I witnessed among developing adults motivated me to understand abuse and to later become an abuse educator and victim’s advocate. When I was a hospital chaplain, I met with a few rape victims just hours after they were assaulted. As a pastor, I’ve supported many women who have been raped, molested, and abused in other ways. Reading Emily Doe’s story makes me recall a hundred other stories that I hold in the shadowy recesses of my heart.

Even though I haven’t experienced the pain of rape myself, the people and stories I’ve encountered in my career have ravaged my emotions. Supervisors advised me to keep an emotional distance in these situations. I really tried in the early years, but then I began to wonder—is there a way to remain impervious when a woman sits next to you and shakes as she recalls the most terrifying hours of her life? Now, I don’t think it’s possible to be fully human in those moments and remain emotionally detached. Not when you’ve heard a victim’s story, held her hand, seen her wounds, and shared her pain-filled silences.

I’m human. And when other humans are suffering, I hurt. Emily Doe’s story, and all of the stories that have rippled out from Brock Turner’s act of violence, hurt me. And from the outrage I see across social media, many of you are hurting too.

So what do I do when another horrifying story of injustice rips me open? What do we do with all these wildly raging emotions when we hear a story of such violence being done against a human being—especially when we aren’t directly involved in the situation?

Use them. Use the emotions.

The best advice I can give you is to gather up all of the emotions you feel churning inside you and turn them into fuel. Let the ferocity of your anger and the raised hackles of injustice motivate you to live a transformational life.

Don’t just be a person who seeks to do no harm to others. Be a person who actively looks for ways to protect the vulnerable, someone who steps forward to advocate for victims of all kinds in your sphere of influence—be it big or small. Our impassioned emotions might lead us to protests and rallies, to sign petitions to hold civic leaders accountable, or to volunteer with organizations that are doing their best to spread justice in our communities.

Not all of us will have the opportunity to directly intervene in an act of sexual violence like the Swedish graduate students, but all of us will have opportunities to care for someone who has been abused. In the United States, someone is sexually assaulted every two minutes. If you know four girls under the age of 18, at least one of them has experienced abuse. The same is true if you know six boys under 18.

Statistics indicate that all of us know or will know someone who has been abused in some way—sexually, emotionally, verbally, or spiritually. This fact may outrage and sadden us, but we don’t have to stop at feeling. We can allow those feelings to shape the way we interact with others. You may not know whom in your life shares Emily Doe’s story, but someone does. So it’s best to always speak and act with kindness because you never know the wounds people are hiding.

Choose to be a person who approaches people who are hurting. Listen attentively to their stories and do your best to understand their circumstances. Allow their painful experiences to expand and fill your stores of compassion. And if you are healthy and able, you might even sacrifice some of your time and ask how you might help carry their burdens or stand in solidarity with them.

For those of you who are shocked by Emily Doe’s story and don’t know much about sexual assault, allow your shock and horror to motivate you to learn about abuse—what it is, its prevalence, causes, and consequences.

If you are a parent or someone with direct influence over children, think critically about what language, attitudes, actions, and proverbs you pass on. Abuse is a learned behavior. You can be an adult who raises up compassionate, respectful, peacemaking children, the kind of children who grow into adults who jump off their bicycles and intervene when they see someone being raped.

And speaking of those two Swedes, I’m reminded that it’s not just the dark emotions of injustice that can change us and make us transformational, compassionate people. Along with all my anger and outrage over the Stanford rape case, there have also been healthy doses of inspiration. Every moment and movement of bravery and resilience and justice in this case has brought healing tears.

…we both have a choice. We can let this destroy us, I can remain angry and hurt and you can be in denial, or we can face it head on, I accept the pain, you accept the punishment, and we move on…Your life is not over, you have decades of years ahead to rewrite your story. The world is huge, it is so much bigger than Palo Alto and Stanford, and you will make a space for yourself in it where you can be useful and happy…

Emily Doe wrote that in her victim’s statement to the court. She wrote that to her rapist. That she is even able to think about Brock Turner’s future makes me stand in awe. Emily’s statement shows me that rape and violence and pain have not won. They are not the end of her story. Emily has not been extinguished by what Brock Turner did to her. Instead, she is rising up out of her horrifying ordeal, it seems, with her own expanded stores of compassion and understanding.

Maybe I’ll meet Emily Doe one day as I live and work near her. Maybe I won’t. But I’m so thankful that she had the courage to write and share her statement, her story. Emily, you’ve reminded me again of the beauty of the human spirit. You shine with it. Your story reignites my desire to be an advocate and a peacemaker, someone who is as kind to the grumpy woman in line at the grocery story as I am to someone who comes to my office for counseling.

Thank you to Emily Doe, and to all of the Emilys who have shared your stories with me over the years. Your pain has changed me. Your ability to overcome, and seeing you reemerge to life, has taught me how to endure and learn from my own hardships. Because of you, I choose to live in a way that helps others heal and thrive.

 

Most importantly, thank you to the two men who saved me, who I have yet to meet. I sleep with two bicycles that I drew taped above my bed to remind myself there are heroes in this story. That we are looking out for one another. To have known all of these people, to have felt their protection and love, is something I will never forget.

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Unvarnished: Healing our Images of God

The following is an adaptation of a sermon title “Healing our Images of God” which you can listen to at http://hopechurchchandler.com/sermons/sermon/2012-12-30/healing-our-images-of-god.

All of us have experienced pain, whether past or present. A bomb may have dropped in your life 10 years, 10 months or 10 days ago. Have you dealt with the pain? Have you explored how the shrapnel from that bomb may have damaged your relationships with God? It’s likely that circumstances in your life have affected how you see God. Having a whole and healthy relationship with God is essential for health in all other areas of life.

I want 2013 to be a year of healing for all of us – healing in many ways, but most of all, healing in our relationship with God. I want all of us to be people who wear crowns of beauty, who are anointed with the oil of joy and wrapped in garments of praise, just like the word pictures painted by the prophet Isaiah (61:1-3). Doesn’t that sound great? But to live that way in 2013, we need to pause, take a close look at our lives and see how circumstances have damaged or distorted our image of God.

Let me illustrate with a bit of art history.

Rembrandt's 'THe Night Watch'

The image above is Rembrandt’s most famous work. It’s popularly called “The Night Watch” because its actual title is long and descriptive. Painted in 1642, The Night Watch is a scene of a militia gathered in the center of town surrounded by supporters. What few people know about The Night Watch is that it was covered with varnish sometime after Rembrandt’s death – as was the custom. Cleaned in 1940, the varnish came away and restorers discovered The Night Watch was actually a day scene! When they saw the lightened image (below) they realized that the popular title for the painting was all wrong.

The Nigh Watch (unvarnished)

Another little known fact – when The Night Watch was removed from its original location in the 1700s, the painting had to be trimmed to fit its new location. This process cut off two characters on the left side of the painting (seen below).

Night Watch trimmed

Now we know that for hundreds of years when people viewed The Night Watch, they did not see what the artist created. I believe that the same thing happens to our image of God. Our painful experiences are like dark varnish that shade and distort the way God meant for us to see him. 

How many of you have witnessed or experienced something so terrible that your concept of God no longer fits into your experience of the world? Maybe the recent school shooting in Connecticut or another world disaster or something closer to home has you wondering how God can really be good.

When something bad happens, how many of us trim God down so he can fit in our new understanding of reality? Unfortunately, when we do this, we cut off part of the story that God originally revealed to us. 

Rather than acknowledging and holding the tension between who God is and who the world portrays God to be, we allow life circumstances to distort the truth of God’s character.

Let me offer my life as an example. In the past six years I’ve experienced significant pain in circumstances both professional and personal. The past three years have been particularly difficult. What caused this pain is best kept in the confidence of my counselor and my mentors, so I’ll ask you to suspend your curiosity. Let me simply say that pain has varnished my life from sunshine to mud. Pain has distorted my image of God.The best way to illustrate this is to share a story from my days as a hospital chaplain. It’s a very difficult story to hear, but please bear with me.

One day I was working as the chaplain on call and was paged to the emergency department. There I met a young, single mother. Our staff was frantically trying to revive her four-year-old son.  During an hour of terrified waiting she told me what happened.

She and her son had been swimming in the family pool, he securely clipped in to a life jacket, she floating on a raft nearby. The grandfather came outside and the little boy said he wanted to go inside. They unhooked his life jacket and when he turned to go inside with grandpa, mom pushed off on her raft to continue relaxing. Several minutes later she decided to go check on her son and see if he had everything he needed. Only, she could not find him inside and grandpa hadn’t seen him. She raced outside and looked in the pool but didn’t see anything. (Later she told me the pool pump was broken and the water was very murky.) Thinking her son might have gone to the playground beyond their back gate, she raced there and ran around calling his name. She searched nearby and then ran back to their yard.  When she looked into the pool again, she saw a foot in the murky water of the deep end. She dove in, pulled out her son, yelled for the grandfather to call 9-1-1 and began CPR. None of the efforts of that mother or our staff saved that beautiful little boy. I lay on the floor with this devastated young mother as she wept that her child must never have gone inside, must have slipped back in the pool with her and drowned without her seeing or hearing him.

I worked many drownings when I was a chaplain. Unfortunately, few of them had happy endings. It sounds strange, but when tragedies like these are a part of your daily work, you learn methods to cope and move on to the next case. However, this drowning knocked me down. I could hardly function the next day, couldn’t bring myself to see patients, couldn’t stop the tears. I asked myself why this drowning was affecting me so personally and profoundly.

Through prayer and reflection I realized that I identified with that boy in the pool. The pool scene was my image of God. My circumstances made me feel like I was a child without a life-jacket, drowning in the murky waters of my life. Oh, I knew that God was with me like that mother was with her son in the pool, and I believed that God loved me as much as that weeping mother loved her child, but I felt like God had taken his eyes off of me and I was slipping under the water, unnoticed. Inside, my soul was crying out, “Don’t let me drown!”

Six years of painful experiences and events changed the way I saw and related to God. My image of God morphed from a loving parent to a neglectful parent who overlooked me. I had known what it was to bask in the love of my heavenly Father, but I could no longer feel the warmth of his gaze on my face.

Pain is not the end of my story. I’m walking a healing path. If you want a fuller picture of the healing in my relationship with God, listen to the sermon.  Here, I’ll simply list for you significant healing points. This is not my advice to you. It is not a step-by-step process or a self-help strategy. None of this was very intentional but was the result of a desperate desire to have my image of God and my relationship with God restored.

Lament – I embraced the biblical practice of lament and cried out to God. I took the Psalms and made their words my own when I had no words.

Prayer – I realized that my inner thoughts and prayers were sliding into a kind of un-holy and depressing complaint. I got sick of wallowing. I needed something constructive so I changed my prayer life. Prayer became an intentional time of silence where I simply acknowledged that I was in God’s presence. The only thing I ask of God is to be given consolation as I wait for things beyond my control to change.

Self-Exhortation – Sounds strange, but I reached a place where I had to confront myself. I had to ask myself the questions, “Corrie, is God negligent? Is that the truth of God’s character?” and then struggled toward the answer. It was a process of shoveling through the manure pile that was my pain and scraping through questions until I got to the bedrock of truth. I understood that I was the one who allowed my life circumstances to varnish and distort God’s image. Here is the most important question I unearthed: who is the artist of God’s image – me or God?  Put simply – who holds the paintbrush?

Sorting through Shadows and Light – Rembrandt was famous for a technique called chiaroscuro, using bold contrasts between darkness and light in a painting’s composition. Regrounding myself in the belief that God is the artist of his image and the Bible is his canvas, I’ve schooled myself to check the things the world says are true about God against what God has revealed as true. Having faith means that even when circumstances and feelings paint a bleak or dark picture in my understanding of God, I seek out the light. I find the light in the narratives of scripture.

I felt that God was a negligent parent who overlooked me in my pain, but as early as Genesis 16, the story of a downcast woman named Hagar reminds me that God is “the God who sees me.” So I focus on the light in this story, the truth of God’s character. The God I worship is one who sees the downcast, the abused, the runaways.  He is the God who finds them and who blesses them abundantly.

Waiting – I can’t tie this post up in a nice little bow for you. I have not reached ‘the other side’ of these tribulations, if there even is one. I realize that I am in control of very little that can change my circumstances, but I can shape my response to these things. I’m learning all kinds of difficult lessons about waiting, endurance and trust. I’m sure there are many blog posts to come about these.

I want to encourage you to think about ways in which painful life circumstances have varnished your image of God. Have you struggled for so long that you can no longer hold the tension between your life and your understanding of God?  Have you trimmed God down so he can fit into your understanding of the world?

If we believe scripture is the truth, then we need to see it as the canvas on which God painted his image for our viewing pleasure. If we want to be shaped by the Word and not the world, then we need to surrender the paintbrush. We need to give it back to the Master Artist. We need to gaze long and deep into God’s canvas, the Bible. We need to submit our feelings and our experiences to his story, to his revelation. Oh, what an image he creates!

If that message does not connect to your soul, then maybe it is time for you seek healing in your relationship with God. Maybe you need to look deep into your own story for the place where things went wrong and see how your image of God got stained and distorted.  Maybe it’s time to surrender the paintbrush and let the Master Artist restore his greatest work, the image of his love for you.

Return of the Prodigal Son, (detail) by Rembrandt Van Rijn

(The Return of the Prodigal Son (detail) by Rembrandt Van Rijn, 1669)