Staying Filled

 “I will satisfy those who are weary, and I will refresh every soul in the grips of sorrow.” Jeremiah 31:25

I needed to visit a few people in the hospital earlier this week. Since we pastor a rural town, round trip is some 60 miles. Leaving town I had less than a quarter tank of fuel and when I was ready to return about an eight of a tank remained. It was 90 degrees outside, my headache was doing its daily best and I toyed with driving straight home without filling up.

I am fairly sure I would have made it home just fine. Averaging over 30 miles per gallon I knew I probably still had a range of over 40 miles. I also knew that the few minutes I spent filling up would be nothing compared to the hour I would have to wait in the afternoon sun if I ran out of gas. I pulled up to the Safeway pumps and filled it to the top. My Kia Forte took 10 ½ gallons, leaving me almost two in the tank. I could have made it home.

How much time would I have wasted if I did run out of fuel? How much aggravation and added pain would I have bought? I have learned a lot about allocating resources since being plagued with New Daily Persistent Headache. What once seemed a bottomless tank of energy and creativity now finds its limit very early in the day.

I had a conversation with a friend of mine about those inner reserves. Approaching fifty, he has been an outdoorsman his entire life. From tackling Mt. Saint Helens before she blew her stack, to hiking the trails around Rimrock Lake, he grew up loving the rough and rugged life. He shared a recent trip with his young son up an incline that start as a gentle slope but increase to a steep incline near the top. “Twenty years ago I could take that last bit nearly as fast as the beginning,” he said. “But not now. I reached for the inner reserves and there was nothing there.”

I fully understand. One friend has described her battle with pain this way. Imagine you are given twelve tokens at the beginning of every day. Now, think about everything you do to get ready each morning. You get out of bed, take a shower, brush your teeth, get dressed, have some breakfast and drive off to work. For the normal life, you probably have used only a single token, if that much, to get out the door.

For someone with chronic pain, the first token is spent simply getting out of bed. The thing which requires little thinking and perhaps a bit more effort, is a daily decision for the pain-sufferer. “Will it be easier if I lay here another half hour? Maybe I can take today off.” Those are my waking thoughts nearly every morning.

My feet on the floor, and I’ve already spent a token. The shower is my second token, getting breakfast my third. When number twelve is used, there are no more tokens. And, there are no “token filling stations”. I have to wait until the next day; sometimes even longer. The person with chronic pain is simply done once that final token is used. In my entire life, I never thought that whether to get out of bed would actually be a decision I would have to make every morning. But it is.

A friend just wrote me this week. He shared his own struggle with depression and described the guilt he feels because he has trouble praising God in the middle of it. Christians are to be joyful always, right? So shame overcomes him. I don’t have a ready answer. Sometimes all I do is cry.

But one thing I know, I have never leaned on God more than now. I used to be a “go-getter” pastor. I would make at least four visits a day during the week. I am doing well to make that many over the course of the entire week now. I would take off at midnight at a moment’s notice for emergencies. Now, if I am not directly needed on the scene, I wait till the morning to follow up. And, I feel guilty about a lot of that.

Six years into this battle, one thing I’m learning is to allocate my resources. When I was young and pain-free I could take a midnight phone call, have a day full of meetings the day after, and still function. Now, I could easily be down for two or three days for not taking care and using my tokens wisely.

I do know that Father God has been very kind. I have no idea why He hasn’t healed me, but I do know He wants me to learn to be satisfied with His love when I am weary. Though I may not physically recover well, He wants me to learn to be refreshed inwardly when sorrow plagues me. That only happens when I let go of what I could have been with limitless tokens, and live the 12-token life He now has given me. I am learning to let Him run the world without my 80 hour days to help. And, I’ve caught up on all my favorite sitcoms, so it’s not all bad, is it?