13. It hurts

ONE DAY AT A TIME
Meditations for Carers
13. It hurts
Psalm 69.29, 33, GN

Nobody warns you that disability or degenerative illness – whichever it is you’re dealing with – hurts. Your loved one who is actually enduring the condition may feel no direct pain – but you do. What you feel will change from day to day and moment to moment but there is a pain that lingers. It’s like a toothache, flaring up from a constant nagging ache into hot, sharp, unbearable agony.

We each have our special mixture of exhaustion-fuelled pain and despair, grief and disappointment, and much more. You know your own variety. But how to deal with this pain? Fighting it seems to make it worse. Instead, it needs to be acknowledged, as in the psalm above. Recognized for what it is. And – that word again – accepted. Trust that God is aware of your pain and cares. Then simply enfold your life around it – and, like the grit in the oyster shell, it may be transformed into the heart of a beautiful pearl...


Taken from One Day at a Time: Meditations for Carers by Dorothy M.Stewart