Category: Healing From Chronic Pain And Illness

It’s very easy to take for granted things we have all the time, until the day comes when we no longer have those things anymore. Have you ever truly thought about what it would be like if you suddenly lost your eyesight permanently? How about your hearing? Or what your ability to move your legs? Having endured for some time now high levels of physical pain that have severely limited my day to day functioning in life, has gotten me to thinking about this and how I took all of those things and more for granted throughout most of my life.

On most days now, I struggle to stand for any period of time and walking is limited to very short distances. Tasks I once never put much thought to such as taking a shower, going grocery shopping, walking through a mall, and so many other things are now extremely difficult to do. It’s also been hard to go through the past four summers where most of my friends and acquaintances partook in things I wanted so badly to do but couldn’t such as hiking, biking, jogging, going to amusement parks, taking long walks on the beach, or even playing various sports. Thankfully though, all of this has taught me a very important spiritual lesson and that’s to be grateful for ALL of what I have, even if it seems like the simplest of thing.

So for that set of eyes I have that are still functioning, I’m grateful to God because there are more than 39 million people out there in this world who can’t see a single thing with the ones they have.

As for that pair of ears I have that are also still functioning, I’m grateful to God because there are more than 15 million people out there in the world who can’t hear a single thing with the ones they have.

And then there’s my legs. While they aren’t functioning as best as I know they could be, I’m grateful to God anyway for them as they still have the ability to be used because there are over 130 million people out there in the world who have legs that no longer function to walk or even stand.

The list goes on and on with the amount of disabilities that people endure in the world these days which so many of us won’t ever have to deal with. I have a lot more compassion now for all of those people in the world who can’t see, or hear, or are paralyzed, or have any type of disability because of my own pains I’ve endured. And ironically, I’m even grateful for having all these pains and limitations in the first place because of how long I once lived my life completely oblivious to how good I really had it, as compared to how many people were suffering so much more in the world around me.

I have a gratitude journal now that I write in every single day. When each of my days come to an end, I open that journal and give thanks to God by writing at least nine things I was grateful for during that day. And I’ve been doing this for several years now and don’t plan on ever stopping. In fact, one of those things I’m grateful for right now that I’ll be writing in my gratitude journal tonight is my ability to use my hands as it has allowed me to type one more entry into this spiritual blog.

God willing, I don’t believe I will ever take for granted anything anymore that I have in my life. Having gone through the temporary loss of much of my normal state of being has given me a very deep appreciation for what I still have. Even more importantly, my heart is filled with a lot more love, light, and compassion now for all those people who live in the world with some form of a disability.

So the next time you find yourself being ungrateful for anything, I encourage you to take a moment, breathe, and try to “see” all the things you still have that so many others might not have in this world. And in all seriousness, if you are reading this right now with your eyes, be grateful for at least that, and understand there are 39 millions others who won’t ever be able to do the same.

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

Have you ever been in a position where you didn’t know what action to take for something you were facing? Or have you ever encountered a dilemma where there were multiple paths you could go down but didn’t know which of them to follow? Sometimes, the best decision in those situations is to take an action that many overlook as even an action at all and that’s to be still.

Being still requires patience and that’s a trait too many of us seem to lack. It’s one I’ve been trying to learn a lot more about over the past few years. But enduring the high pain levels I’ve been going through daily for several years now has often led my brain to taking headstrong actions. And unfortunately, for each of those ego-based actions I took, there were re-actions that brought on a new level of stress. So deciding to take some medication to numb the pain usually sent me down the path that caused even more pain to occur and prevented the source of it from ever healing. There were times too that those headstrong actions led me to trying new healing modalities that did nothing for me but detour me for months and months and drained me financially. Thankfully, those experiences led me to the place where I found the action of being still to be a much better one to follow. It’s one where I wait patiently now for clear direction to come from my spirit and from God.

Recently, my sister’s family went through one of these experiences where they didn’t remain still and wait patiently for things to happen as they were meant to. Her husband had gotten a new job out of state that was going to require their family to move again. There were several more months left in the school year for their sons and their first reaction was to remain where they were until the end of the school year, sell their house, and then move. But certain conditions came up that brought about some fears within them. This led to actions that were swiftly taken to move them out of state before either the school year ended and before their house had sold. For the next four months that followed, their family lived in quite a bit of chaos and ironically, when all the dust had settled, their original house had sold just after their kids school year would have ended. The point here is that if they had just been still and waited patiently as they originally had intended, there’s a good chance their stress levels would have been drastically less during that period of time.

The example with my sister’s family is one I often reflect on when I think about trying to do something abruptly to curb my level of pain these days. And truthfully, the last thing I want to do is complicate my healing process anymore than it’s already been over the past few years. Too often in my life I’ve jumped head first into doing things without being still and suffered the consequences in doing so. So being still has become a much healthier action for me to take. It’s one where I simply just wait patiently for the answers to come. And even when they do, I still continue to be still until my spirit says the time is right to take any actions that came from those answers. Don’t get me wrong, being still is extremely challenging, especially for someone like me who is a go-getter and a Type A personality. But I am finding my life isn’t filled with an abundance of poor decisions anymore that did nothing but lead me down many dead-end paths.

So the next time you are facing your own dilemma and don’t know what to do…you might want to take a moment, breathe, and realize that being still really is one of the actions you could take to deal with this situation. Instead of making an irrational decision from your ego that could do nothing but bring you regret, try this path of patience and I’m sure you may find yourself experiencing a lot less stress.

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

One of the things my mother took to her grave was her desire to have a burning bush experience with God that she felt never came. For those who may be reading this that do not know what a burning bush experience is, according to the Bible, when Moses went up on Mount Sinai to wait upon God for direction for his people who were growing impatient, he encountered a burning bush that God spoke through and gave him direction. People like my mother have often equated this story to when they’re looking for their own sign and direction from God. What I’ve learned on my journey is that sometimes the signs from God are a lot more subtle.

In Moses situation, the sign of God’s presence was abundantly clear. But for my mother, it was never clear enough. In the last few years of her life, she held steadfast to her belief that God needed to give her a burnish bush experience before she would change anything in her life. In the meantime while she waited, she drank excessive amounts of alcohol that essentially led to her death. Looking back at her life, there were many signs that I felt God presented to my mother. The greatest of which came a year before she died when she fell down the stairs drunk and broke parts of her face and had to be on a breathing apparatus for awhile. Sadly, after she went through a small sober period after that, she returned to her same stance of looking for that big sign and eventually went back to alcohol for the answer. A year later, she fell down the stairs again and broke her neck, dying instantly.

Why is it that we look so much for these huge signs like a burning bush? I’m guilty of it as well. In the past three years of my life I have gone through so much pain and anguish on a spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical level. On many days, I’ve asked God for a sign to know I’m on the right path. Like my mother, my brain has quite often wanted the same thing my mother sought. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t secretly desire to have my own burnish bush experience. But somehow I’m beginning to think that God communicates on a different level these days.

Before all the physical pain became constant in my life, I believe there were many signs that God was sending me to wake up and take a different path. My closest friends and family at the time were often warning me of what they were seeing transpire and how sick they felt I was becoming. I didn’t listen. One of the toxic people I was hanging out with back then crashed my car and also pointed a gun at me and I still didn’t listen. Parts of my body occasionally had great physical pain that suddenly came on but I still kept on living in those toxic behaviors. At one point, all of my body began hurting and this finally grabbed my attention. It did get me to change directions and alter the course of my life for the better. It has made me wonder though if the pain was the only sign that God could resort to so as to get me back on track.

Today, I’m still dealing with a lot of pain but my stance on it is a little different. I look at it as my body’s process of healing. But I will admit that there are many days I still do wish for some great sign from God, such as hearing a booming voice, to show me that good days are on the horizon. Regardless, I think God’s presence is in our lives all the time except we don’t look hard enough for it. Most times, I’m guessing we all take matters into our own hands and try to do what we think is best for ourselves when those signs don’t come in the way we think they should come such as it was in my mother’s case. Today, I wait patiently upon God for a lot of the healing that really is out of my hands, but in doing that, I also remain open for any small signs of God’s presence. Things such as animals coming up close to me and staring at me for awhile, insects including dragonflies and butterflies landing on me, double rainbows suddenly appearing in the sky in front of me, or beautiful bird feathers showing up somewhere around me on most days are taken as examples of God’s signs now.

There is a theory that I have now with how God shows signs in our lives. When any of us aren’t listening and are off doing whatever it is we feel like doing, maybe the signs are a lot more direct and can only come through things that will grab our attention such as major health issues, financial hardships, or huge fallouts with friends and loved ones. And quite possibly, could it be true that when we get on track and are on the path that God wants us to be on, the signs get a lot more understated and it’s all about just remaining alert and being open to them?

My favorite visual representation of the craziness in how people can get when looking for a sign from God can be seen with Jim Carey in the movie Bruce Almighty. During it, he asks for a sign from God and then sees a “Caution Ahead” sign in front of him that he ignores. He then asks God a little more directly and a truck suddenly appears ahead of him filled with “Stop”, “Caution”, and “Wrong Way” signs. Yet he continues ahead and ignores them. He grabs his cross hanging on his rear view mirror and says a prayer while he runs over a bump in the road which forces him to drop the cross to the floor of the car. At which point, he grabs it, looks up, and then runs into a pole, stopping his forward progress altogether.

Maybe signs from God are a lot more like this and a lot less like the burning bush experience that Moses had? Maybe too many of us didn’t listen to the signs that God once gave us in a very direct way? While I really don’t know the answers to either of those questions, I do know that a sign from God can probably come in infinite ways. And maybe the most important thing is for each of us to just pray to remain open to them in an way they may come.

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson