Pain, Gratitude, and Faith

October 25, 2014 by JoAnna 13 Comments

Here’s my Stream of Consciousness Saturday Post on the prompt: degree/degrees.

The first thing that popped up for me was the degree of pain my Dad and a girl named Lily have been feeling recently. Dad has been having a lot of pain in his back near his ribs. When I asked him how much pain he’s been having on a 1 to 10 scale, he said it ranges from 5 to 8. He’s had this pain for at least two weeks, and after his third visit to the ER Thursday, he finally got some muscle relaxers to go with the other pain meds, and he got some good bedside manner from a lady doctor who explained things, like there’s a lot of calcium around his spine. Sometimes it helps to have a little more information. The thing is, my Dad was a marine for 20 years, and he has a lot of leg pain from war wounds in Korea. He’s had a lot of experience with high level pain, and he doesn’t complain too much, and he’s not normally on addictive pain meds. So I know he was really hurting. Thankfully, the muscle relaxers seem to be helping. He had lots of tests, X-rays, blood work, and scans, and they couldn’t find anything wrong except a lot of calcium around his spine.

The other person is Lily, part of our family who lives far from me. She’s a lively girl approaching adolescence who woke up in the middle of the night yelling with intense head pain. She was taken to the ER and lots of test were run, but, like with Dad, they couldn’t find anything wrong on the tests. But Lily was still having an intense degree of head pain. She’s getting better now, but she’s still very weak after a few days and still vomiting. They think it’s an infection or she had a seizure, but still don’t really know.

Pain can be mysterious and frustrating. The examples above quiet my complaints today about a relatively low degree of back pain. Like at a 2 maybe, at most. Part of being almost 59 and not enough exercise, I guess. I’m thankful it’s something I can do something about and that there are exercises, both physical and mental, that can help in addition to the good ol’ Bengay-type rubs and OTC meds.

I’m thankful that Dad and Lily’s pain is easing, and that I can pray for them. I’m thankful to have a degree of faith that is growing every day. There will be pain. Pain lets us know there is something wrong that needs our attention.

There will also be joy. I hope I always have a high degree of gratitude.

Dang, I’m having a hard time not editing this thing.  It’s a mess.

Gratitude, JoAnne, gratitude.

Stream of Consciousness Saturday is inspired by Linda, at http://lindaghill.com/2014/10/24/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-october-2514/

Here are the rules:

1. Your post must be stream of consciousness writing, meaning no editing, (typos can be fixed) and minimal planning on what you’re going to write.

2. Your post can be as long or as short as you want it to be. One sentence – one thousand words. Fact, fiction, poetry – it doesn’t matter. Just let the words carry you along until you’re ready to stop.

3. There will be a prompt every week. I will post the prompt here on my blog on Friday, along with a reminder for you to join in. The prompt will be one random thing, but it will not be a subject. For instance, I will not say “Write about dogs”; the prompt will be more like, “Make your first sentence a question,” or “Begin with the word ‘The’.”

4. Ping back! It’s important, so that I and other people can come and read your post! For example, in your post you can write “This post is part of SoCS:” and then copy and paste the URL found in your address bar at the top of this post into yours.  Your link will show up in my comments, for everyone to see. The most recent pingbacks will be found at the top.

5. Read at least one other person’s blog who has linked back their post. Even better, read everyone’s! If you’re the first person to link back, you can check back later, or go to the previous week, by following my category, “Stream of Consciousness Saturday,” which you’ll find right below the “Like” button on my post.

6. Copy and paste the rules (if you’d like to) in your post. The more people who join in, the more new bloggers you’ll meet and the bigger your community will get!

7. Have fun!