I set out to accomplish a simple task: rotate my tires. They needed it, and I can do those kinds of things. In fact, I enjoy doing those things. My dad is a mechanic and I grew up rebuilding engines, and changing oil, and bleeding brakes. There were even some jobs he would let me do on my own for others, which I really enjoyed and for which I got paid. My first car was a repo we bought from the bank. My dad and I changed out the old diesel engine, bought an engine & transmission from the junk yard, and rebuilt it. I miss the way that carburetor would open up when I pressed it to the floor!
On this day, however, I ended up hurting my back. I thought it was just a muscle strain, but as the week went on it got worse. Finally, one night I was on the floor and I rolled onto my back, feeling a lump on the lower right side of my spine. This, combined with the top of my right foot feeling asleep, got me nervous. So off to the emergency room we went. It was a case of sciatica.
However, sciatica is a symptom of something else. An MRI showed that I have a bulging disc pressing against the sciatic nerve which is causing pain down my entire leg and into my foot.
While the vicodin helps dull the pain slightly, pain has been part of my body for at least a month now. So in the mindset of never letting a crisis go to waste, I began thinking about the value of pain. Pain is a useful part of the human body. It sends us messages about our body. We don’t like pain, but pain has a role in our lives and one that we need to consider.
Pain lets us know something is wrong.
I have had this pain in my foot for several years. It randomly wakes me up at night, throbbing and burning and tingling for between 1 to 3 hours. Then it will go away. It might happen at 11 pm, 2 am, or 4 am. It doesn’t care that I might have to get up early or that I really needed some sleep or that I had just fallen asleep. Late last year, when I finally decided I couldn’t live with the pain any more, I went to the doctor. I’ve had all kinds of tests, blood work, and name-brand medication prescribed to me, and this pain shall not be deterred. I set out on a new exercise routine about 8 weeks ago, and I discovered the more I exercised, the less this pain attacked me. However, my back was hurting more and more and a pain returned down the right leg. And then I decided to rotate my tires.
Pain, lets us know that the body is not functioning properly. All pain is an indication that something is wrong either in the body or the mind. Many times our pain is a result of injury the body has received. I tore my ACL in my knee playing football. My father eliminated part of his index finger in a freak table saw incident. At other times, it’s caused by a virus or bacteria and we get sick at our stomachs.
Pain can also be a result of age or wear and tear on the body. Eventually, joints wear out and we can get arthritis. These days, trading that old, worn out knee or hip joint, for a shiny new metal one is fairly common. It reduces the pain or eliminates it altogether.
Some pain, however, is a result of emotional issues. There has been a whole science developed around the physiological affects of psychological issues called psychophysiology. While psychophysiology was a general broad field of research in the 1960s and 1970s, it has now become quite specialized, and has branced into subspecializations. For example, Social Psychophysiology, Cardiovascular Psychophysiology, Cognitive Psychophysiology, and Cognitive Neuroscience.
Psychologists are interested in why we may fear spiders and physiologists may be interested in the input/output system of the amygdala. A psychophysiologist will attempt to link the two. A psychophysiologist may look at how exposure to a stressful situation will produce a result in the cardiovascular system such as a change in heart rate, change in blood pressure, or a stroke. It is this perspective of studying the intersection of mind and body that makes psychophysiologists most distinct.
Stress can cause muscle tension, be a contributor to cancer, and result in weight gain, diarrhea, ulcers, insomnia, or narcolepsy. Broken emotions cause us to self-medicate in some way, often resulting in addictions that destroy the health of the body.
It is when we move past the symptoms that we can discover the source of our pain. It could be as simple as the MRI showing a bulging disc into the nerve tract that is causing pain. But it could be something more. It could be that the stress that reveals itself in the shoulder muscles is a result of an insecurity or emotional unhealthiness that results from fear.
When we have this pain, we can either ignore it or do something about it.
Q4U: What pain exists in your life? Are you willing to explore the emotional, spiritual, physical, and relational elements of your life to discover what is really at issue? You might find that Holy Rewired would be helpful in helping you uncover your feelings, thoughts, and actions.
