Without

Try to remember when I first knew no escape was possible. Too long ago. I should have kept a journal. Should have, could have, would have, how can it matter!



I do know I longed for preservation. At first, I think that was the main goal! Prisoners are not free to choose,I know that now.



Still,I remember hours of exhaustion. In my mind,searching for a way out.Mornings when I cried not knowing how to continue. If I could only find a clue. Or maybe a key.



I never did have words to describe what was happening so that anyone could comprehend. I could not even comprehend it myself. Here I was day after weary day putting one foot ahead of the other. At times I had to take my shoes off and stand on cold cement. Yes,relief followed. I was not at liberty to continue.Must keep moving. I remembered "I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep". Yes, endless miles it seems.



How can it be morning again!!! The hours passed; now I have to move again. I don't know how, but I must keep going.



Somewhere in my mid thirties this became my life with Pain as my constant companion. You Dear Reader,can imagine how I longed to be without Pain.



I read my beloved Amy Carmichael's A Rose From Brier. It was a book for the ill by the ill. Page after page she wrote of the very struggle that I was engaged in with the very big exception that I was not bedfast.How grateful I was for that.



There was another exception, as a single mom I had to work to keep my household going.Nights I would come home fix supper then lie down on the couch and wake in the night to find my child asleep on the floor beside me.I felt so bad for her but I was glad she made the decision to stay close to me instead of roaming the streets.



I found a copy of Dr. Paul Brand's book Fearfully and Wonderfully made in which he taught me that without pain I would have no interest or knowledge of self-preservation. Can you imagine Dear Reader, what a salve for my soul to understand at last the reason for pain.



I read his experience in treating lepers and learning why they would become blind, for instance,because they could not feel pain when dirt got in their eyes,they did not blink which helps to clear debris from eyes.Astonished I was to realize this part of self-preservation.



Reading His experiences revealed to me one of the blessings in pain.Even emotional pain causes a withdrawal from the source of the pain.As a child I remember stepping on a nail and my first response was to remove the nail from my foot.A leper does not know the nail is there so continues to walk on it.



Lately I have learned of a little 18 month old child who suffered from a rare genetic defect known as congenital indifference to pain and it was manifested, to the mothers horror, in finding that the child had bitten the end of her finger off and was happy drawing red lines on the sheet from the blood flow.



That story does not have a happy moment from that time forward. The child enjoyed getting by with, whatever, just by threatening to chew off another finger tip.Mother and Father divorced because Mother refused to place the child in a home.At last reading the child is 11 and is living in a home,now without lower limbs which had to be amputated because of injuries that could  not be felt.



Dear Reader, for sure it is difficult to live with pain but I hope you can see why I don't want to live Without.



As Paul Harvey used to say,'now you have the rest of the story.' Good Day!