Question
I suffer from chronic pain, mental issues (some stem from my painful past). Doctors don’t help. Counselors can’t fix it. I’ve tried a million medications and none of them fixes it either. I feel like giving up. Can you offer any words of advice?
Answer
My dear friend,
I hear your heart and know that you were/are struggling again in an intense way. I’m so sorry. You aren’t looking for sympathy, I get it, but you are my friend and my heart hurts that you hurt. Honestly, if I had a magic wand I would take it away.
I have to say that as an outsider (someone other than you), I refuse to give up hope. I know it’s easy from out here, but I truly believe that there are solutions to some of your challenges. I think that medication will help and it will be a hard road to find the right one that works for your system. But remember, you have to use them as prescribed and let them soak in a long time before you make that determination. It’s horrible, trust me, I know about switching meds and freaking out. That much we share.
But I truly believe that with continual counseling and talking out things from the past, you will get better.
I don’t know the solution or how God is handling this, I wish I did. But I do know that you are not abandoned. I know you likely need hand-holding to walk toward health, but resist help in your heart.
I know that the answer is that it’s going to take years, but I do believe that with the right guidance from God, the right help around you, the rest of your life can be phenomenal.
I know you’re tired. We can’t make good decisions when we are tired, but if we are always tired, how do we make decisions? That’s a tough one. But I believe that you have moments of clarity at work. Moments at church. Moments when things are going well. Don’t give up.
And let me close with a rather ‘de-motivational/motivational’ concept (that means it will either help or bum you out more, I have no way of knowing your mindset at the time of reading this). I want to talk about the power of hope. I was listening to a audio CD about Dakota Meyer, who fought in Afghanistan and lost all his buddies, and received the Medal of Honor. He talked about how he would pick up the wounded and tell them that they would be okay, whether they were or not. At first, I was offended by that. I don’t like lies no matter how much they help. But then I began to think of the opposite. If I’m wounded to the place where I’m going to die, would I want someone to say, ‘Yeah, man, it’s worse than you think, you’re not going to make it’? Would that help me through the process? No. But here’s my point. Mankind doesn’t know whether someone else will live or die, God does. Hope has a powerful way of infusing our spirit to struggle to survive and more times than not, HOPE is powerful enough to launch us through the hell-storm and smoke and emerge out the other side.
Despair has the opposite effect.
How does that apply? Because you are to continue trying things with the hope that something will unlock the combination and God can bring healing. Just the sheer hope will carry you through times that you couldn’t make it otherwise. Whereas, despair might just make you miss out on trying that one thing that will bring relief.
I’m a bottom-line kind of guy. It makes sense to me and it’s how I have to look at my struggles. Don’t give up my friend.
