Chronic Pain can Harden Your Heart and Cause You to Hate Your Body

Ezekiel 36:26 – I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.

It’s another one of those days. The sun may be shining outside, but inside your heart it’s a cloudy day.
 
You tire from the day-in day-out struggle with pain or an illness. Sometimes you do better than other times, but there are many days that you feel hatred toward your own body.
 
It’s like as if it’s an entity unto itself. It screams at you, “You think you’re in control of your life, but you’re not. I’m in control! I’ll decide what you can or can’t do today. I’m the one who can turn your day upside down.”
 
But you push yourself even though the screams inside haven’t calmed down. Anger is about to spill all over your day, while pain is right behind with fists pounding down the door to your heart.
 
You try to go about your day smiling at people in line at the grocery store or saying pleasant “hellos” to fellow coworkers. However, what’s inside will eventually find its way outside.
 

• You start saying mean things about that slow grocery clerk inside your head. You can’t believe their incompetence.
• Then you make it to work with only a few minutes to spare and think really dark thoughts about how you hate your job and everyone who works with you.
• You sit and try to do your work, but pain is pounding harder and anger won’t go away.
• You get up to retrieve something from the fax machine and you stumble and almost run into your boss.
• Then, just as you’re about to sit down at your cubicle a coworker walks up to you. “Oh, no.” You think. “Please don’t let this be another assignment I have to finish today. I just can’t handle one more thing.”

 
Your coworker gently places her hand on your shoulder and says, “I can tell you’re having the start of another bad pain day.” You feel anger swelling inside of you and then embarrassment.
 
Living with chronic pain and illness can steal much of your life. And it can indeed feel like it’s taking over your life, but it doesn’t have to. You’ll find some ways to look deeply at anger on lasvegasrecovery.com website in their article, “Anger, Resentment and How They Affect Chronic Pain.” The article provides some hands on ways to identify what you’re feeling and then tips on how to deal with the anger. It also discusses how resentment is related to anger in that anger is about the present, whereas resentment relates to the past.
 
Back to your coworker:
 
“I don’t think you know this, but I deal with chronic pain too,” they say. “It’s not an easy road to walk on, but I found that when you have even one person in your corner the anger that’s just beneath the surface dissolves into gratefulness for someone who understands.” Then your worker says they will pray extra hard for you today, and you find your anger just went out the door and a softened heart takes its place.
 
You see, God knows you. He sees that all of your anger has turned your heart of flesh into a heart of stone. But he is able to use people like your coworker to help heal your heart. Chronic pain may continue to spill all over your day, yet you may begin to feel less hatred of your body, and a renewed spirit which can see that there’s hope your day won’t have to be destroyed by the pain you face.

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