No Shortcut

Dear Sufferer,

I have been meaning to write you this letter for a while. There is no shortcut to what the Lord will teach you through your chronic disease, but I thought it might help to know some of the things I have learned through my chronic migraines. One of the first things I realized when I found out migraines were going to be uninvited guests in my life, was that there is a reason God gives us limits. Before migraines I could push myself and my body would keep on going, but my mind would not. I would get tired to the point I couldn't think straight and, because of my mother's mental illness, think that I was becoming like her. Scary. In God's mercy He gave me a physical limitation so that wouldn't happen. I'm sure you have already realized that God has given you your limitation for a reason and, whether you have discerned that or not, I would encourage you to look for the mercy behind it.

Another thing I had not been good at before migraines is listening to my body. There are times when God wants me to push through the pain, treat it as best I can, then ignore it and go about my business. But there are also times God makes it clear that I am to lie down and rest. On those days, when I try to walk around, my head throbs until I lie down. It does not take a lot of spiritual insight to figure that one out. Tracy was only four when my migraines started, preschoolers can be pretty understanding about mommy not feeling good. Tracy used to bring me his softest teddy bear to use as a pillow thinking it would help my head feel better. It didn't help my head, but it sure made my heart feel better.

The third thing is learn about your disease. That is much easier now than it was 30 years ago when my headaches started. No one knows how your body works better than you. The first five years of migraines, I saw my family doctor who tried me on a number of pain killers which increased my nausea and didn't decrease my pain. Between that, I used a Tylenol/Mountain Dew/ice pack combo which could bring my pain level down from an 8 to a 7 or even 6, but I would have asked for a referral to a neurologist in those first few years instead of suffering if I had known that was the specialist I needed to see. To this day, I can't stand the taste of Mountain Dew. I have also tried chiropractic, acupuncture, massage, various supplements, Botox and seeing a specialist in Seattle. Acupuncture helped for a few weeks, the rest of them didn't help at all. Be willing to try new things, but don't let a health practitioner tell you something is helping when it's not. And don't feel you need to follow every suggestion your friends and family throw out. Just because it worked for __________ doesn't mean it will for you. Frankly, I find it a little insulting when someone offers a simple suggestion, as if I would have endured headaches for decades because it never occurred me to go for a walk or some other cure they heard about. I don't say that, of course, but I try to keep that in mind when I suggest remedies for non-migraine health issues.

The best thing about suffering is that it helps link me with others in pain and with Christ. The Bible teaches there is an intrinsic value in suffering that I don't fully understand. But I do know that the day after a migraine so severe I was kind of going into shock, cold, clammy skin, shaking, I watched "The Passion", and when it depicted Jesus's hands shaking as he stood up to be flogged some more, I knew some tiny part of what that felt like. And it was the darkness of depression years ago that helps me identify with Christ's cry of being forsaken. Anything that makes me identify with Jesus is a good thing, however uncomfortable it feels. I know God is using your illness to mold you into Christ-likeness, and that is easier when the clay doesn't fear or fight the process. I hope this is an encouragement but, like I said, there is no shortcut.

Connie

What We Really Need is Soul Control

     Every time there is a mass shooting, there is public outcry to do something, anything, to make them stop . Many cry out for gun control, as if another law will make guns magically disappear. If this were true, the cities with the strictest gun control would be safest against armed criminals when, in fact, just the opposite is true. See Obama's Illinois, for example. It is like believing the Oklahoma City bomber could have been deterred by a "No Parking" sign. Those willing to break laws about murder will not worry about whether their weapon is legal. The problem is, whether it is a bomb, gun or steering wheel, it is not what is in the hand that makes a killer, it is what is in the heart and mind. There are no laws that can change what a person thinks and believes. We can legislate the penalty for taking human life, but we cannot force anyone to value it.
     We especially can't do that when the same legal system allows babies in the womb to be dismembered alive. A few weeks ago our local newspaper had a front page article about Whitefish, Montana welcoming a clinic that provides abortion. It was the same provider who shut her clinic in Kalispell after the trauma of an act of vandalism. Immediately below that article was one about a school shooting in Kentucky. Some chastised the editor, I thought it was brilliant. As a religious man and a conservative, I think he placed it there because the two articles are related. One leads to the other. If unborn human life has no value, what difference should a few years make. As tragic and horrible as it is to shoot children in their school, it is not as violent as vivisecting the most innocent humans in the one place where they should be most safe--the womb. Maybe the sociopaths among us are not the aberrant thinkers we paint them to be. They just carry society's accepted disrespect for God and the people He created to its natural conclusion. Maybe they see clearly what the enlightened pretend they do not, that the birth canal does not change human worth. Either life has value or it does not.
     We need to find ways to make schools, churches and public gathering places safer, but gun control only makes those places safer for criminals. The only way to change anyone's heart and mind is through the transforming power of Christ. What we really need is soul control.