some days I deal with both, crushing physical pain with no position in which I can get comfortable, crushing heartache in which my head spins with grief and I can't get away from the pain.
While physical pain can be distracted, inside suffering is another matter. You can't put mental anguish or heartache behind you. Those hurts create an emptiness that refuses to be pushed or crowded out of your thoughts. It bites, gnaws, grinds away at your sanity.
Feeling like your heart has been stomped on; your feelings have been trampled. A slandered reputation, a love relationship spurned...painful memories of abuse. I am convinced emotional pain is much worse than physical pain. But I am also convinced it does something to our heart that physical pain often cant'. Inner anguish melts the heart, making our souls pliable and bendable. Because we can't drive it from our thoughts, hopefully it will force you to embrace God out of desperate, urgent need.
A man's spirit sustains him in sickness, but a crushed spirit who can bear?
1 comment:
I think mental and emotional pain can knock on our soul, but i must admit, i'm a wuss when it comes to physical pain.
Also, the signs aren't usually as evident when we're in emotional pain--it might be clearer for those who know us well, but to the world at large, not so much; whereas if you use a cane to walk, the world can see at once that something is amiss.
And when the signs aren't evident, sometimes the people act out causing the rest of us to wonder what's going on, but often there's an overwhelming loneliness that goes with that pain, and you feel as if you're screaming into a vacuum.
They say people can't die from a broken heart, but i don't believe it. They certainly die by degrees, and listlessness can make a person be like the walking dead.
And yet, we can give it all to the Lord. He will carry it for us, although it's been my experience that in order for Him to carry it for me, i have to first see what it is, experience it a bit, and then hand it over. And just as many times, i snatch it back. Give, take, give, take, give, take. When i finally really and truly hand it over, i wonder why it took so long for me to do so.
I think about the passages where it talks of our being tried by fire, and i wonder if emotional pain is one of those ways of refinement. I think it was Kahil Gibran who said the cup that's carved deep from pain is the same cup that can hold joy. Sometimes it helps me to think of that, and other times, i think my cup is plenty deep as is. Or that this latest "character building experience" is completely unnecessary, as i already have enough character!
sending t's and p's your way,
megan
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