When Tempted to Despair

Today I laid alone in bed and stared at the ceiling. I stared at the crisp white paint and the uneven lines in the corners where color met it. I remember the hours spent painting a year and a half ago, and how exhausted I was–how eager I was to be done–mistakes or not. My shoulders ached and my back–well–it grumbled. But today is a different story…today–it screams. And that is why I laid there on this beautiful Autumn day, oscillating between an ice pack and a hot rice sock, because every movement reminded me of the inescapable pain in my lower back.

I sometimes feel like life moves in these odd kinds of rhythms. There are moments of expectation where I look forward to something wonderful and am instead greeted by disappointment and pain. That is how I hurt my back. I woke up early and decided to skip my workout and stretch my tired muscles instead. It was to be a relaxing start to my Tuesday. Instead, my hamstring stretch turned into my worst nightmare; my sacroiliac joint twisted out of place. And while I tried desperately to move it back, it was lodged like a button in the throat of an unsuspecting toddler.

As Bugs Bunny would say, What a maroon!

Never. Ever. Stretch cold muscles that are sore and tight.

I visited the chiropractor yesterday with the expectation that he would right my SI joint and I would walk out of his office pain free. Wrong. Instead, the pain continued to build until I was forced to nearly crawl from my place of employment. Getting into my car was another matter entirely. And by the time I arrived home there were tears streaming down my face. Pain is, well, painful.

And it’s odd how pain seems to clarify the mind. My brain ebbs and flows like waves, pushing thoughts of despair and loneliness onto the beach, and pulling with them any sense of hope or joy. And all I could think about was when I would be able to exercise again and what a huge setback this kind of injury is and how is my family going to manage without me at full capacity. And so it was in the middle of all that jargon(which threatened to pull me fully into the Slough of Despond) that I made a conscious decision to just stop analyzing my recovery and rest easy in the knowledge that I am loved.

Now maybe that seems simplistic, but for me, it is a fundamental truth. I have fought long and hard to get here to this place of trusting God to show up. And I have learned through tears and anger and physical agony that my temporal situation matters to the sovereign God who stoops low to meet with me. He is real. And He loves me.

That was today. Yesterday—-I ate ice cream!

And that is usually how I deal with pain or sorrow or anger. I default to food every, single time.

Today I am giving myself the grace to accept that my body will not always perform the way I want it to. I am giving myself grace to love God for who he is and not who I want him to be. And I am giving myself grace to skip the pizza my family is having for dinner because I ate ice cream yesterday. We all stumble and fall. And if we are smart we realize that we are fragile and broken people who can only be made whole by a loving God. And I am so glad He loves me just as I am. Cookie loving, ice cream imbibing, despairing and still hopeful, Margaret.

And I suppose this is why the lines from an old hymn come to mind when I feel most hopeless… I know that while in Heaven he stands, no tongue can bid me thence depart.