Category: Healing From Chronic Pain And Illness

What would life be like if none of us held onto any secrets? For me, it wouldn’t make a single bit of difference, because I don’t have any anymore. But for others who do, I’m sure it might create total chaos in their life for a while. Yet what many who harbor secrets don’t understand is how they are still creating a world of chaos within themselves by holding onto them.

“We’re only as sick as our secrets”, that’s what I heard when I first began my recovery work from alcohol and drug addiction. I didn’t quite get that statement initially and especially didn’t grasp that concept in all the prior years before coming to recovery either.

In fact, I lived for a very long time holding on to one secret after another until the anxiety and depression of keeping all that muck suppressed within finally caught up with me. Hiding all my of addictive behaviors caused me to live in a constant state of fear, guilt, and doubt. I had to always watch what I said and was concerned that somehow my partner or anyone for that matter would discover a few things about me that I knew wouldn’t put me in a good light.

It has brought me great freedom though to be fully honest these days, notably so in my writing here in this blog. I divulge the full truth of my life in the words I type and even do the same when I speak as well. The freedom from not having any secrets to worry about ever seeing the light of day is pretty amazing.

In stark contrast to that freedom was all that fear I used to have when I was regularly engaging in highly sexualized connections with others while in all the prior committed relationships to the one I’m in now. I always worried that I might slip up and say something to the people I was dating that might reveal the secret of my toxic behaviors. Or I also worried that I might run into one of the people I was doing those behaviors with and have to somehow find a way to keep the secret covered up.

That’s just the tip of the iceberg of the many secrets I used to carry around and the more I did, the more I had to lie to cover them up. And the more I lied to cover them up, the more I became spiritually sick. And the more I became spiritually sick, the more I became mentally and emotionally sick as well. And the more I became mentally and emotionally sick, the more I experienced anxiety and depression. And the more I experienced anxiety and depression, the more my body fell into disrepair, eventually becoming physical sick too. Thankfully all that physical sickness led me to finally see the truth about harboring secrets, which is why I’m so blatantly revealing about my life now, as I don’t want to cause myself any more health issues.

So, that’s why I’m not concerned if somehow the world suddenly had a switch flipped where none of us were able to hold onto any secrets anymore because I no longer have anything to hide. And ultimately, I think that’s precisely what our Higher Power wants for each of us, to get fully honest in every area of our lives and see that we truly are only as sick as our secrets…

Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson

Patience has not necessarily ever been my strong suit in life, but, it is something I’ve cultivated a lot more of over the past five years or so through my spiritual recovery work. Unfortunately, it’s still been an extremely difficult thing to have on those days when my pain levels are really high.

Just last week for example, I woke up and felt like I had been brought through the wringer during the previous night’s sleep. As I attempted to start my day in agony, I found myself feeling on edge with everything, and I do mean everything.

It started immediately when my partner returned home around the lunch hour after running a few errands. I had asked him to buy me some top soil for the yard, yet I discovered he had bought garden soil instead. But rather than being grateful for the attempt, I reacted negatively with strong criticism. Shortly thereafter, he presented me with a surprise, a bag filled with an ornament for our garden and a few other miscellaneous things, none of which I needed. So instead of thanking him for the gesture, I snapped at him over his expenditure of money I felt he didn’t need to spend. And snapped is probably an understatement, because in all reality, I used the “f” word a number of times, as well as a bunch of other swear words too. To put it bluntly, I was a complete jerk and seriously ungrateful, all of which was directly attributed to the level of pain I was experiencing at the time.

The rest of my day after that followed suit. I became impatient with people in lines at the places I was at, with the cars on the roads I drove on, with the friends I hung out with, and with just about everything else too, which is not the norm for me on days when my pain isn’t so great. In fact, most have said I seem to be a pretty patient person in areas they often struggle with. But being in pain is like being on a short fuse. In other words, it’s like being a ticking time bomb, ready to explode at any moment.

I’m not proud of this and honestly, it’s definitely my biggest flaw and frustration right now in life. What makes it even harder to deal with is those days when my pain returns to calmer levels, as it’s then I tend to look back and see all the mistakes I made in my impatience over my pain, and usually feel a lot of despair over it.

Being patient is truly difficult on every level for any person who deals with chronic pain that’s for sure, and it’s something that also feels downright impossible to practice on those days when the pain reaches exorbitant levels. The main solution I’ve found to deal with this when it happens is to isolate, because at least then I don’t end up taking it out on a bunch of other innocent people. Sadly though, because I live with my partner, I can’t totally escape everyone. The result of which is me occasionally reacting in impatience to silly things like receiving garden soil instead of top soil.

Look, I know I’m not expected to have the patience of a saint and it probably seems like I’m beating myself up in my words here. And maybe I am. That’s why I generally find myself doing a lot of praying these days, especially when my pain is high, saying short prayers like “Jesus, please help me be patient with others.” I also utilize the amends process every time my impatience still gets the best of me, because the last thing I want to do is make someone else feel as bad as I do inside.

Regardless, I continue to do my best to remain patient on all days, especially those when my pain is so great. And one day soon, when my pain is finally gone, I believe all of this work I’m doing now to remain patient will pay off. Because it’s then I’ll have a level of patience in life that’s far greater than how I’d be with a life that had never experienced any pain at all…

Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson

Sometimes I really just want to leave the mainstream world behind me and head to somewhere like the mountains of Nepal where I might find a monastery to experience some true peace. The fact is, I haven’t been feeling a lot of peace at all lately and that truly bothers me, as I have experienced before what true peace ultimately feels like.

The last time I felt it was after embarking upon a 10-day silent retreat in the mountains of North Carolina back in 2005. But eventually all of that peace departed when I fell deep into some addictions many months later. It’s now been a good ten years since and I have often felt just about everything but peace.

While my life isn’t filled with addiction anymore, it has been filled with plenty of other difficult things like deaths, physical pain, financial hardship, mental imbalance, loneliness, and a number of other struggles as well, all of which have made it extremely difficult to feel anything even close to peace.

Trust me, I have done everything I know to do to find it, yet it constantly seems to elude me. I have prayed and prayed and prayed for it, asking God for guidance and direction to get there, and haven’t heard much of anything other than to keep doing what I’m doing and remain patient.

In the meantime, however, temptation has beckoned me at every turn, constantly knocking on my door to do all the former unhealthy things I once did with such regularity. I have been enticed to drink, lured to smoke weed, drawn to look at pornography, aroused to commit infidelity, and even thought about taking my life more than a few times.

Waiting has never been my strong suit and neither has been letting go of control. Usually when I want something so badly, I have always found a way to get it by my own means. But peace doesn’t appear to be something that will ever come in that way. It isn’t something I can buy and it isn’t something I can get through engaging in any of those temptations either.

Peace seems to be something that comes when it’s meant to, usually when God sees that I’m ready. So, I guess I’m still not ready, which is probably why I continue to ponder the idea of going to a monastery in the mountains of Nepal to look for it.

Unfortunately, the likelihood is that I wouldn’t find it there. Because the last time I tried to recreate the peace I received from that retreat, was when I embarked upon a second 10-day silent retreat, feeling exactly as I do right now. There, instead of discovering the peace I so wanted to discover again, I instead found there were a number of areas in my life I had to work through first, which caused me to leave the retreat early, feeling the exact opposite of peace.

Ever since, I have asked God many times if I should try again, and the answer has always come back the same.

Be still and remain where you are, doing what you are doing.

UGH!!!

That’s how I feel right now knowing that and the best picture I can portray of this is of a person who’s stranded in the middle of the Sahara Desert with nothing in sight but one sand dune after another. And they are thirsty, so very thirsty for that life-giving water and not even a single oasis is in sight either.

I don’t know why God allows us to be in places like this for long periods of time, where no matter how much action we take to find peace, it still eludes us.

Sitting in this emptiness, waiting for guidance and direction, is tough. Yet, I believe it’s a step that I must continue to take on my spiritual journey toward enlightenment.

One day I will feel true peace again, that I believe, because my eyes remain focused on following the love and guidance of God and not the illusions of any of those temptations.

And while I may still think from time to time about going to a monastery in the mountains of Nepal purely out of frustration and desperation, I know that true peace can be found in every step, no matter where we are in this world, even right here in Toledo, Ohio, where I remain to pray and wait upon God, who I know will deliver it within me when I’m truly ready…

Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson