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PAIN 

New scientific research indicates there is differences in the way people handle pain. Whether someone is wimp or a stoic may be due to a variation in a single gene that determines a person’s tolerance of pain. 

The gene helps regulate how many natural painkillers, known as endorphins, the body produces. University of Michigan Researchers believe this may explain why a crushing blow to one person is trivial to another, and why pain medication, which helps one patient, does nothing for another. It may also explain why men and women tolerate pain differently. 

Research indicates about a quarter of the population has inherited the “stoic” gene, while another quarter has inherited the gene variant that makes them super-sensitive to pain. Most people tolerate pain somewhere between the two extremes. 

The researchers caution that there may be other factors influencing the way a person experiences pain, but the new discovery may help doctors customize pain treatment, and allow them to predict which patients will respond to a certain medications using a simple gene test. The ultimate goal of the research is not only predicting pain tolerance, but also understanding what combination of genetics and other factors make certain people more vulnerable to painful diseases, like the joint-afflicting fibromyalgia that tends to strike women. 

—Associated Press, February 20, 2003. Illustration by Jim L. Wilson and Jim Sandell. 

1 Peter 4:12-13 NIV “Dear friends, do not be surprised at the painful trial you are suffering, as though something strange were happening to you, But rejoice that you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed.” 

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PAIN 

Not all pain is visible. President Nixon awarded Bob Kerrey, a Viet Nam war hero, a Medal of Honor when a Viet Cong grenade ripped through his leg in 1969. However, the injury to his leg was not the deepest wound Kerrey retained from battle. His emotional wound has remained hidden, though haunting. 

On February 25, 1969, Kerrey led a group of Naval commandos in a raid on a Viet Cong Chieftain, which resulted in the deaths of a score of unarmed women and children in the village of Thanh Phong. Under the cloud of controversy, Senator Kerrey stated in a speech, "Though it could be justified militarily, I could never make my own peace with what happened that night." 

—Newsweek, May 7, 2001, p. 40, Illustration by Jim L. Wilson and Keeney Dickenson, http://www.freshministry.org/prayer 

Psalm 51:3 NIV "For I know my transgressions, and my sin is always before me."
 
 

PAIN/CHARACTER 

In her book, Making Your Faith Your Own, Teresa Vining discusses the connection between pain and character. She writes, "When I first began to understand this, I accepted it only grudgingly. If I have to undergo pain to produce character, so be it, I thought, but I secretly suspected God could have found a better way. But then I began to wonder if perhaps our participation with God in producing godliness in ourselves actually increases the glory of attainment the glory of God and our potential for sharing his glory.” 

—Making Your Faith Your Own: A Guidebook for Believers with Questions by Teresa Turner Vining. Chapter 12, "Contending with a Tragic World," pages 137-148, Illustration by Jim L. Wilson and Krista Van Gorp-Carnet 

For more information on Making Your Faith Your Own, go to: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0830823263/fm082-20
 
 
 
 

PAIN/SUFFERING 

Lance Armstrong is a walking, excuse me, cycling inspiration. In July of 2001, he won his third Tour de France, just five years after being diagnosed with an advanced stage of testicular cancer. 

“We have unrealized capacities that only emerge in crisis—capacities for enduring, for living, for hoping, for caring, for enjoying. Each time we overcome pain, I believe that we grow.” Armstrong says. “Cancer was the making of me: Through it I became a more compassionate, complete, and intelligent man, and therefore a more alive one.” 

—http://www.forbes.com/asap/2001/1203/064.htmlIllustration by Jim L. Wilson 

Sometimes, as in Armstrong’s case, what we think will be the ruin of us becomes what brings out the best in us. What could be our undoing, can become our finest hour. 

James 5:11 NLT “We give great honor to those who endure under suffering. Job is an example of a man who endured patiently. From his experience we see how the Lord's plan finally ended in good, for he is full of tenderness and mercy.”
 
 

PAIN/SUFFERING 

On October 16, 1987, the world finally exhaled after holding its breath for 58 hours when Robert O’Donnell, a paramedic in Midland, Texas freed 18-month old, Jessica McClure from the 22-foot deep, 8-inch wide hole she fell into. It was finally over; Baby Jessica was safe. 

But really, it wasn’t over for Jessica, it was just a beginning. 

She was alive, but the ordeal left her with some medical issues that required 13 reconstructive surgeries. She had to have 60% of her right foot amputated, and she still bears some scars from the incident, one of them on her forehead. 

How do you think Baby Jessica has responded to her scars, now that she’s not a baby anymore? When she was eleven-years old, she told the Ladies Home Journal, “I’m proud of them [the scars]. I have them because I survived.” A few years later when she was sixteen, she appeared on ABC’s Good Morning America (Jan 27, 2003) and said her scars “remind her of how much God loves her.” 

—www.caver.net/arch/jess14.html; www.caver.net/arch/oa.html; a.com/rlopex/stories/wfaa021016_am_mcclurefolo.c7368377.html 

Let those words sink in for a minute. Instead of being bitter for her scars, she lets them remind her that she survived the ordeal and that God loves her. 

There are two ways of responding to our pain. We can be angry at God because bad stuff happens to us. Or we can praise Him that He is with us when it does. 

Psalm 23:4 KJV “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.”

Proverbs 3:11 (NAB) “The discipline of the LORD, my son, disdain not; spurn not his reproof;” 

For more information on Seeking the Face of God go to: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0736900195/fm082-20

In Seeking the Face of God, Gary Thomas writes, “It is true that God loves us and has a wonderful plan for our lives, but it is equally true that the plans often fraught with tension and uncertainty, and with emotional, spiritual, and physical pain.”

--Seeking the Face of God, 161. Illustration by Jim L. Wilson

Lamentations 3:5 (AMP) “He has built up [siege mounds] against me and surrounded me with bitterness, tribulation, and anguish.” 

For more information on Seeking the Face of God go to: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0736900195/fm082-20
 

Mother’s Day isn’t the easiest day for Cheryl to go to church. It isn’t that she resents the pastor passing out roses to the mothers or recognizing the oldest, youngest and the mother with the most children. It’s just that she wishes that sometime during the service someone would recognize those present who long to be mothers, but can’t. 
 
Mother’s Day is tough, but there’s also the monthly reminder that she isn’t pregnant and the occasional insensitive question, “So when are you and Bill going to start a family?” For the first seven years of their marriage, that was an easy question to answer. They’d decided not to have children, but then they changed their minds and wanted to get pregnant but couldn’t. The sad truth is that in some cases, a woman doesn’t have the right to choose. Oh, she can choose all right, but that doesn’t mean she physically can have a child. That’s not Cheryl’s problem. Her doctors tell her that there is no physical reason that she can’t have a child. In a way, that makes it worse. Every month she waits, and every month the emotional distress accompanies the physical discomfort. In another way, it makes it easier, because she knows that this is in God’s hands. She will get pregnant if He wants her to.
 
But why wouldn’t He want her to? Why doesn’t God wish to bless her with children? Is it punishment for not wanting children at the beginning of their marriage? Patiently, she watches as the other women in the church get their roses on Mother’s Day. It isn’t the roses. She can buy her own roses. It is what they symbolize—the blessings of God in these families. Why won’t God bless her? It isn’t the recognition she craves, it is the blessing. Why does God bless all these women with children, but not her?
 
Sometimes, she longs for God’s blessings; other times she doesn’t even expect God to bless her. Maybe that springs from the garden variety of insecurity that everyone experiences, or maybe it’s a childhood flashback. Cheryl’s dad was better at drinking his paycheck than using it to provide the family with their basic needs. From early childhood, Cheryl learned not to expect what her friends had. Not just things like toys, clothes or food, but things like knowing if she would find peace in her home when she returned from school. It was tough when her Dad wasn’t there, especially on her Mom who had seven kids to look after, but then again it wasn’t a cakewalk when he was home either. When he was home, Cheryl helped her Mom corral the other kids and keep them quiet and out of her Dad’s hair. Her home was filled with anger, resentment and want, not peace.
 
Cheryl wanted to provide a home for her unborn children that she never had. Why won’t God let her? Why did she have the kind of home she grew up in and why won’t God give her a chance to build a godly home for someone else? With time she’s been able to release the bitterness over her childhood, forgiving her parents and asking God to shower His grace upon them. But letting go of the current pain is harder. 

Cheryl is finding that peace. God spoke to her while she was reading Rick Warren’s The Purpose-Driven™ Life. She sensed Him asking her to wipe away her tears and to consider how her relationship with God was going. When she read about the importance of being candid with God and that bitterness is the greatest barrier to friendship with God, she had to admit her own bitterness. Her defiant heart whispered to her, Yeah, well God caused the pain. When He cures it, then we can talk about honesty.
 
But her defiant heart didn’t win out. When she read the C.S. Lewis quote about pain being God’s megaphone, she realized that God was trying to speak to her in her pain. She was saying to Him, take away the source of my pain, He was saying to her, drop your defiance and I’ll speak to you through the pain. That day she prayed “Father, I long for my praise and worship to be fragrant to you. More importantly, I long to be important to you. I long for meaning and significance. I want to be special. I don’t understand why normalcy has never been possible for me. Especially now, in something so womanly as child-bearing. My very name means womanly, yet I cannot be. Father, help me to find a new name with you.”

--Soul Shaping: Disciplines that Conform you to the Image of Christ, p 53-56. Illustration by Jim L. Wilson. For more information on Soul Shaping, go to www.soulshaping.net

Lamentations 3:5 (HCSB) “He has laid siege against me, encircling me with bitterness and hardship.”