The alarm went off at 5:30 this morning, but I had already been semi-conscious for a few minutes. I was lying there on my propped up pillow marveling that although I could feel the pain, I was being lifted above the sensation. I could still feel it, but yet, it seemed distant to me, and I was able to function again. Is this what it feels like to be carried on the wings of prayer?
For days now I have been battling nausea, my pain level has been so high. Unable to take medication I had little relief except using ice and dousing my already inflamed body in the heat of hot tub soaks to somehow relax the muscle tension that was mounting under the stress of the pain.
My high tolerance for pain comes from a lifetime of living with off the charts chronic pain, beginning in childhood with constant migraine headaches and abdominal pain. As I grew older it progressed at times to whole body pain moving from one side until the total body was engulfed with inflammation and pain, spinal headaches also a byproduct as well as nausea, sensitivity to smell, sight and hearing. But somehow in the midst of all the unrelenting torment I lived, functioned, and endured. Some of my worst days were the best days, as I had to retreat to my bed, window curtains drawn to evade even the tiniest stream of light, soundless except for the pounding in my ears of my heart beat. I would eventually drift away, suspended somehow in this place of inner rest, and I prayed. I prayed for anyone and anything God brought to mind. " It was the best of times, it was the worst of times..." as Charles Dickens writes in "A Tale of Two Cities". I guess somehow, even in the midst of pain, I am arriving at that place above it all, carried on the wings of prayer. I have no other name for it than "Grace".
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