Category: Healing From Chronic Pain And Illness

Back in March, I wrote about my partner’s sudden job loss in one of my daily reflections (https://thetwelfthstep.com/2017/03/08/daily-reflection-46). There I spoke about my belief that God does care about our places of employment, so long as we seek His help with them, even though many told me that God probably has far more important things to be concerned about. I ended that daily reflection with a strong statement of faith saying that I truly believed God would help my partner find a new place of employment and I’m here to report that indeed God did, and in a very unique way at that.

For almost two months following his sudden job loss, my partner prayed daily for God’s help while submitting one resume after another, for positions that were in his field and even for ones that weren’t. Sadly, I watched him receive one disappointment after another, mainly because each of the employers seemed to only want their potential candidates to hold bachelor’s degrees, given he only had an associate’s. I began to grow frustrated and started allowing my ego to take control, telling him he needed to become a lot more aggressive in his search. I also found myself growing angry each time I saw him take breaks and sit in front of the television for extended periods, totally forgetting about my own statement of faith from that daily reflection, the one where I stated I knew God would guide my partner to a new place of employment.

Then one morning, a few weeks ago, my partner abruptly received a call from a company in Toledo he hadn’t applied to, let alone even knew about. They had found his resume on one of those job websites and asked if he was still looking for employment. When he responded he was still in the market, they immediately asked if he could come in that afternoon for an interview, which he did. Then, they contacted him the next day as well, and asked if he could come in again that afternoon for a second interview. As he left that second interview, he was told they had a number of other people to still interview and would get back to him in the beginning of the following week. During that period of unknowingness, I really did my best to pray to let go of control and to trust in that statement of faith I had made about God from that daily reflection. It was hard, trust me, but I kept on praying for God’s will.

By the time a full week had passed since his second interview, my faith had started to really waver again, even more so when my partner called the company and was told they hadn’t made any decisions yet. That’s when my ego began posing all these questions in my head.

Was this just going to be another letdown because my partner only had an associate’s degree?

Was someone else going to be more qualified because of their years of experience?

Was someone much younger going to be offered the job instead?

Yet, even through all that doubt, I kept praying. I said to God that I would accept whatever the decision was and that I truly just wanted my partner to have some hope in his life, given how much he’s endured lately, not just with his job woes, but also with the constant challenges he’s faced when it’s come to supporting me and my ongoing health issues.

And then suddenly, it happened, a week and a day after that initial phone call out of the blue. God delivered! The company presented him with a job offer and it’s then I think God truly proved to me He does care about people’s places of employment. Because through all my partner’s and my prayers, a job that my partner never applied to and never even knew of the company either, found him, said his resume stood out more than the others, and swiftly brought him in for back to back interviews, only to offer him a job at a pay rate equal to his last job over the course of 8 days!

So, do I believe God does care about our places of employment? Absolutely. We simply need to just ask for His help and remain patient for those prayers to be answered, as I clearly see now they will, it’s just usually not in our own ego’s timing.

That being said, I decided to harness the positive energy from this experience into the wavering faith I’ve had as of late with my health and healing and hold firm to my belief that God can, and will, deliver me out of the hell I’ve been living in with my chronic pain issues. That one day, God will restore my physical, mental, and emotional health and when He does, I plan on proclaiming once again that God does care about everything we pray about, even like something as little as this new place of employment he delivered to my partner…Thank You God…

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

Respecting other people’s boundaries is something I’ve worked on quite a bit in my life over the past few years, but there’s another type of boundary I’m realizing I need to work on as well and it’s one I came face to face with recently through a very painful experience.

It happened a few months ago while I and my partner were out taking a sunset drive through a local state park named Crane Creek. There, we came across a number of people sitting alongside the park road near the beach, taking pictures and peering through binoculars. When we saw what they were looking at, two bald eagles sitting in a tree far off beyond a roped-in area, we opted to join them and did our best to enjoy the view. Unfortunately, we didn’t have anything to zoom in on them, which my ego then decided wasn’t acceptable at all. That’s when I noticed the roped off area didn’t continue onto the rocky shore next to the lake.

“Hmmm, maybe I could go walk down those rocks and come up from behind the tree where the bald eagles are perched and get a close-up picture on my phone that no one else is ever going to get?!”

 Yes, that indeed was the thought I had at that very moment and it’s one I’ve regretted ever since. Nevertheless, as I cut through the thicket that bordered the rocks and the lake and headed onto the first of those huge boulders I was about to embark upon, my intuition began nudging me, “Andrew, this isn’t a good idea, you really need to turn back…”

Alas, I didn’t, because my ego often has the tendency to push the limits of boundaries in life, solely to get what I want. So, I continued to proceed forward anyway, hopping from one boulder to the next, when…WHAM!

 Down I went, onto one of the large rocks, as my feet suddenly hit a patch of ice that hadn’t melted yet in the spring thaw off. My left hand awkwardly slamming into one of the boulders in the process, hyper-extending my ring finger grossly backwards. Now, two months later, I still have a bunch of pain in that finger in two different places and have definitely had to learn another very painful lesson in life because of it.

Like so many boundaries I used to cross with friends in the past, where I experienced many of them disappearing from my life because of it, here I faced something similar because I didn’t respect a boundary that was clearly established. A boundary that was not only for the safety and protection of the bald eagles, but also for myself.

Looking back, I really wished I had listened to my institution, which I ultimately believe was my Spirit attempting to gently let me know I was doing something that wasn’t in my highest good. Yet, all too often, I’ve ended up having to go down very painful roads in life, to learn lessons that my ego doesn’t think it needs to learn.

That’s why I’ve decided to respect any roped-off area the next time I come across one, even if my ego begs for a closer look, and even when it attempts to show me a potential exception might exist to the boundary itself. Because the fact is, boundaries are usually in place in life for pretty good reasons. So, hopefully I’ll choose to listen to my intuition the next time this arises and not my ego, as I really don’t need or want any more pain in life, especially any that is directly caused by my own ego-based actions…

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

A friend of mine privately messaged me recently to inquire on the details of the pain I go through on a daily basis after he read one of my articles titled “The Pain Filter”, which spoke about what it’s like to live life through the eyes of chronic pain. When I messaged him back, I said I’d rather talk about it in person, but the more I thought about it in all the days since, that really wasn’t the truth. The real truth is I that actually don’t like talking about my health issues at all anymore, unless it’s with my therapist, my partner, or my best friend from Massachusetts.

You see, with each of them, they know the lengths I’ve gone to, to take care of myself, to foster a healthy mind and soul, and all the exasperation I’ve endured through it all seeing little to no results manifest as of yet, which in turn helps them to know how to respond in a way that makes me feel supported and loved. But for those general bystanders, casual friends, acquaintances, and others who haven’t known me for years and years, or spent enough time talking with me to get to know all that I’ve been through already in my attempts to heal, I tend to receive responses that only lead me to greater frustration.

I know I’ve written about this subject before in a multitude of ways, but it’s something that continues to repeat itself in my life from time to time and is worth mentioning again in a slightly different way. Here are the top 11 responses I normally receive after opening up about my chronic pain to someone who’s not my therapist, partner, or best friend from Massachusetts:

1. “I have a cousin, friend, mother, father, sister, brother, uncle, aunt, etc., who has that same condition. They’ve been suffering from it for years…man that sucks!”
2. “Hey, I just read an article the other day about what you’re going through and did you know that the such-n-such medicine, therapy, healing modality, etc., have helped with that?” (Yoga is probably the number one suggestion I receive.)
3. “Oh, I have this great book that will change your life and deals specifically with that, have you read it yet, if you haven’t, you need to?!”
4. “Have you considered that maybe God isn’t happy with your same-sex relationship and that you’re suffering because of it?” (Yes, this indeed has been said to me.)
5. “How much are you getting out of yourself to help others, maybe you should go volunteer some more, sponsor a few more people, or get out to more recovery meetings, as that might help alleviate some of your pain?”
6. “You know what your problem is, you have too much free time on your hands, you need to get a job, as that will probably fix most of your pain!”
7. “Well you are growing older, and you aren’t a spring chicken anymore, maybe some of your pain is coming from that?”
8. “Have you been checked out this disease, this illness, this disorder, etc. yet? It kind of sounds like you have some of the symptoms of that?” (This is probably the worst thing to say to me, especially being that I’ve suffered from hypochondria quite a bit in recent years.)
9. “So, what if this never goes away, what are you going to do? Or what if this is God’s plan for you to suffer the rest of your life?”
10. “You need to dive deeper in the Word brother, it sounds like you aren’t trusting God enough, don’t know you that God can and will take care of this for you? You probably aren’t turning it over enough. Surrender brother!”
11. “It sounds like you aren’t accepting it enough and practicing enough gratitude, maybe you should start working harder on that?”

 While each of these statements may feel supportive to the speaker of them, they tend to affect me quite the opposite each time I receive them. The reality is that when I share about my pain, it’s not because I’m looking for suggestions, advice, knowledge of someone else that has the same pains or similar, or told I’m not doing good enough in my attempts to heal, or that I’m the cause of my own problem, or anything similar. None of those responses are truly being unconditionally loving and supportive. They aren’t holding space for me to feel safe to open up further either. Instead, it generally causes me to shut down.

The fact is, most people who are in chronic pain like me, simply just want to be heard and told by the person they’re talking to, that they are loved, because with the depth of pain we go through, we often feel so unloved. And if that conversation is held in person and not over a phone by some chance, having a reassuring touch or a hand held comfortingly are also great ways to respond as well. But most people aren’t programmed to answer like that. Rather, most people are programmed to offer comments that frequently seem like they’re coming from a good place, yet their impact typically doesn’t feel that way to the person in chronic pain.

So, the point I’m trying to make here is that if you ever have someone with chronic pain open up and bare their soul to you about what they’re going through, just listen to them and when they’re done, only offer them compassion through your loving touch, your tears, or your gentle words with things like “I’m there for you” or “I will pray for you” or “I will be sending you positive healing energy and light.”

Because anything else, is frequently just the ego trying to either fix them or come up with something that it thinks is comforting, when in reality it often isn’t. What’s comforting to me is the thought of Jesus’s love, as in His case, I’m pretty sure if I bared my soul to Him, I’d receive tears and a loving embrace and that alone would be enough to make it through one more day of this…

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