Category: Healing From Chronic Pain And Illness

I’ve started and restarted today’s article countless times, writing and erasing, and then writing and erasing some more, trying to find some wisdom to share, or any words really. Unfortunately, I’m coming up drastically short as I sit here on this 3^rd floor balcony, gazing upon the ocean, one that sits sprawled out directly in front of me in a 270-degree view late at night in York, Maine.

Usually, being near the ocean inspires me, especially when it’s this late at night. More often than not actually, I tend to find and feel the presence of God in moments like this. But tonight, neither is true and truth be told, I don’t feel God anymore, not for a long while now, and that’s something I don’t know what to do about. While I still believe in a Higher Power, something that my 12 Step recovery requires and something that I can attest is the only thing that’s kept me going forward instead of backwards into a life of addiction, I remain feeling utterly defeated. Defeated from an arduous spiritual journey that feels on most days likes it’s going nowhere except in circles.

What I want the most in life seems to incessantly evade me. Call it God, or call it peace and joy, or call it both, it doesn’t matter. I just want to feel God’s peace and joy within me, regardless of whether my health issues ever go away or don’t. I’ve prayed, meditated, read scripture and other inspirational words, said affirmations, gotten exercise, eaten healthy, practiced gratitude, helped others, and written and spoke about it all on a regular basis, and yet I continue to wake every day, feeling empty, weeping, and full of sorrow. Sorrow over the despair from it all.

I know what it feels like to have the Light of God shining brightly within me, but my light feels pretty dim right now. I fight the physical depression from it all, every, single, day and do pretty well with that. Heck, today alone, I played a marathon of miniature golf with six courses in seven hours, winning every single one of them, yet here I am, still feeling deeply miserable inside. And that’s not because I have some serotine imbalance, or some chemical imbalance, or because I went out and engaged in some addiction, or distanced myself from God somehow, or did anything really to separate myself from the Light of God. But why I continue to feel this way though is beyond explanation and beyond me.

The fact is science and medicine can’t fix this and holistic healing only took me so far. I feel the rest is in God’s hands. Why God has been silent with me I don’t know. Maybe God hasn’t been silent and I’m just speaking a different language? Maybe my level of pain is blocking our communication? Maybe I pissed God off and this is my punishment? Maybe this is penance for the many hedonist ways I’ve lived? Or maybe it has nothing to do with me at all? Regardless, I feel as if I’m sitting in a jail and have been for a long time, one without knowledge of why or even when I’ll be released.

If I could step foot in a courtroom and have God let me know what the charges of my life are that are keeping me in this place, it would be far better than to be left in all this unknowingness, this unease, one that consumes me every day, especially as I witness the joy and peace in others.

God, I believe you are still there. And I’m still here Lord too. Waiting. On You. All that matters in my world anymore is to feel your peace and joy again, two things that continue to elude me, no matter what I seem to do. Without those two things God, I don’t know how to remain here anymore. Yet somehow, I trudge on, limping at best, choosing to believe somehow, in some way, that You are still there, even when I don’t see You or feel You anymore.

So, I guess maybe the ocean did inspire me tonight, Lord and I thank You for at least that, in finding these words, to continue being the transparent Soul You’ve had me become…one that still claims my faith in You, even when I don’t know why I still do…

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

The story in the Bible about a “thorn” that Apostle Paul had in his flesh, some aspect of his life he was never freed of, that plagued him his entire life, is a story that continues to bother me immensely because of how often it’s used in this world as the answer for all the pain and suffering of another.

While I’m not a Biblical scholar, nor am I a religious person, two things I always feel the need to say whenever I write on subjects like this, solely because of the labels people keep placing on me whenever I talk about God or anything Biblically in my blog, I do have a spiritual view when it comes to Paul, specifically surrounding a “thorn in his flesh”.

For those who may not know what this story is about, it’s said that Paul was plagued throughout his ministry with some condition that’s never revealed precisely what it was, other than it bothered him so deeply he called it “a thorn in his flesh”. Paul prayed to God several times to remove it, but it never was removed, leaving Paul to believe it was a tool to keep him humble. This story has been used throughout millennia ever since to justify much of the pain and suffering countless others have gone through, which frankly, I haven’t found comforting whatsoever for two reasons.

The first deals with the reality that no one knows what Paul’s thorn was. Heck, he could have simply had chronic constipation or diarrhea for that matter, which annoyed the crap out of him (pun intended!). Or maybe Paul’s thorn was a person or group of individuals who followed him around everywhere he spoke and heckled him constantly? Or maybe his thorn dealt with a financial issue, or a skin condition, or a deformity, or loneliness in life, or an irrational fear, or something else altogether. The fact is, no one has ever discovered what Paul’s thorn was, yet it’s been compared to countless illnesses, diseases, and painful situations in one life after another. That has not and never has been comforting to me to think that the many health conditions I continue to face are simply a “thorn in my flesh” meant to keep me humble, when even one of them would do that job in of itself. At this point, I have so many “thorns in my flesh” that not only am I far beyond feeling humble in life, I feel defeated and am struggling to keep going. Even more so, seeing God as a Being that inflicts “thorns in a person’s flesh” to keep them humble only makes it seem that God is nothing more than a disciplining and punishing Being, and not one of unconditional love. Obviously I don’t find that thought comforting either, especially given I grew up with a mother just like that who inflicted many thorns in my side through her words and actions.

The second reason why I haven’t ever found Paul’s “thorn in his flesh” story comforting relates to what Paul was freely given once those “scales dropped from his eyes”, because it was then Paul felt a Presence fall upon him and within him that he clearly described as one of joy, that never left him throughout any of his ministry, which clearly helped him endure whatever that “thorn in his flesh” was, as well as all those beatings, jailing’s, and shipwrecks he endured as well. While I too have felt that Presence before, it’s one I haven’t in years, no matter how hard I’ve tried. The last time I did feel it, it came upon me not of my own doing and lasted for five days, during which it didn’t matter what “thorns” or pains I had going on at the time, because I felt loved and embraced so deeply by Something far greater than I ever will be.

So, while Paul’s story of having some “thorn in his flesh” with a Presence by his side to endure whatever it was, may be an interesting one like many religious stories often are to me, it’s never been a comforting one, especially having lived for a long time with chronic pain and health issues where the Presence of God has felt more absent than not. What has been comforting though through it all is whenever someone listens to my sorrow without judgment, held my hand without fear, or embraced me in their arms without hesitation, because it’s been in each of those moments where I’ve felt that Presence, albeit briefly, yet enough to know that God is still there, something that a story from the Bible, or any religious book, has never done for me, yet any act of unconditional love from another has…and always will…

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

Yes, I have officially turned the big 5-0 today. It’s hard to believe I’m a half century old now. Where did all those years go? Frankly, the notion that I’ve lived for 600 months, 2608 weeks, 18,262 days, 438,288 hours, 26,297,280 minutes, and 1,577,836,800 seconds is astounding! While I have plenty of mixed feelings surrounding a birthday that was always “way out there” looming in the distance, now that it’s ultimately here, I find myself asking one specific question I never asked myself at any of those prior big milestone birthdays of my younger adulthood. But, before I get into what that question is, I think it’s important to show the mindset I had on several of those previous major birthdays.

When I turned 21, I drank myself into oblivion with far too many tequila shots at a bar named Red Creek that was near my university, Rochester Institute of Technology. I felt then that I had my whole life ahead of me and didn’t care much about anything but pleasing my ego and raising my dopamine levels in any way I could. When I turned 30, I was long sober from alcohol and drugs and had settled into a relationship with someone I thought I was going to be with for the rest of my life. I was earning an amazing salary in a former computer career, and I celebrated it all with a huge Hawaiian-themed party in the backyard of my home just outside Washington, DC. I wasn’t questioning anything then because I thought I had it all figured out. But when 40 hit, I realized I hadn’t really figured out anything in life. It was then I had just begun facing some hardcore recovery work surrounding addictions I had never addressed, was in the beginning stages of the many health issues I continue to face, and had just gone through a tremendous financial loss in the upper six-figure range from my business that went under, so I wasn’t thinking much about anything except how I was going to survive. My celebration on that day was a few recovery friends and a few loved ones having a barbecue for me, one I was more checked out than in. Ten years later, turning 50 today, while I have survived through a whole heck of a lot in life thus far, I keep asking myself the same question…

Why am I here???

Is this a question that comes up frequently when one turns 50? Is it a question often asked specifically around this major birthday milestone?

At 50, being jobless, income-less, health issue-laden, and dependent upon my partner in more ways than I really wish to be, the best answer I have to that question presently is I’m here to tell my addiction and PTSD recovery story, a story that took me from a hardened and broken heart, to a caring and loving one, one that seems to inspire many each time I share it, whether it be via my writing or speaking. But is that the sole reason why I’m still here or does God have some greater plan for me that just hasn’t come to fruition yet?

While I regularly hope that one of God’s plans for me is to physically heal me from this heavy physical pain I’ve carried every day for years now, and another is to become healthy enough to return to the working class to a meaningful and fulfilling paying job, neither will matter if I don’t feel God’s peace and joy again, something I haven’t felt in almost five years, no matter how hard I’ve tried to find it. As I’ve said in many articles’ prior, living with intense chronic pain daily tends to block one from feeling that.

I often wonder if maybe that’s why both my father and mother checked out early in life, with my father making it just past 50 and my mother just past 60. Neither felt God’s peace and joy for years prior to their deaths, both being blocked by mental and emotional health issues. While I have worked through the majority of that, I have been unsuccessful finding any solution to moving beyond the chronic pain I continue to live with, which has left me feeling devoid of God’s peace and joy, more than not.

So, while I don’t want to follow in my parent’s footsteps as I begin this life beyond 50, I also don’t want to keep asking myself the same question of, “Why am I here?” I believe the only solution to move beyond this dilemma is one that requires God’s peace and joy. Because whenever I’ve felt that in life for the brief moments I have, it’s always shown me that I was exactly where I was meant to be, doing exactly what I was meant to be doing, no matter how small or difficult it may have seemed to my ego at the time. To feel that again, for the rest of my life, I don’t believe it would matter whether I was turning 50, 60, 70, or any age for that matter, as feeling God’s peace and joy will always transcend any of the ego’s need to find answers to the questions it asks itself so futilely, questions that include the very one I keep asking myself as I turn the big 5-0 today of, “Why am I here?”

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