I’ve lived with chronic pain for so long that I’ve become ACCUSTOMED TO IT. I don’t remember a time my body didn’t hurt. I’m not writing this for sympathy. I never talk about it because I’ve never wanted it to be a thing. I don’t ask for prayer around it anymore because, well probably because I don’t BELIEVE it will help. It hasn’t.

Last night, as I was going to sleep, I thought: I literally can NOT imagine what it will feel like to live in a body that doesn’t hurt.

It made me wonder. What “things” in our lives have we lived with for so long, we’ve just grown “accustomed to them” and decided “that’s just the way it is?”

If this hip replacement eradicates the majority of my pain, and I am hopeful it is, is it going to be weird living without pain? It’s become such a part of me. What will I do without pain?

Again, not writing for sympathy or being overly dramatic…I’m simply using this as an example for YOU to take a look at what you’ve “grown accustomed to” and lived with for so long it simply seems like part of who YOU are.

It’s not y’all. This pain I live with is NOT me. The pain you live with is NOT you. Whether physical, emotional, or spiritual pain…I think, over time, because we don’t know HOW to get rid of it, we just accept it and kind of OWN it as part of who we are. We try to treat the symptoms, only masking, often very temporarily, the ever-present pain.

I don’t have all the answers, but, I do believe I’m on this journey to discover some and then to share them with you.

📓 For today, a good journal question to ask your self might be “what have I lived with for so long that it’s just become a part of who I am?”

Shew. That’s a loaded one.

Love you all. Truly.