Reconnecting: The Importance of Friendships & Faith
An opportunity to see a dear friend of mine presented itself this weekend. I hadn't seen her in over four years since she moved from New Jersey to Georgia. To see her, I needed to drive to Delaware where she was visiting family. I am so glad I had the chance to take that trip.
At first I was reluctant to travel due to a variety of issues, including physical limitations, but in the end I decided seeing my friend would be worth the effort.
My friend and I both suffer physical difficulties so we planned our time together with a lot of flexibility. We managed to travel into Baltimore Harbor and see some sights and enjoy some great food. We didn't push it. In fact, I was pro-active and put in an extra set of clothes right below my heating pad in my suitcase. I was determined to be prepared in case I needed to stay an extra night...and it turned out to be a good thing because I did indeed need to take the extra time and use it to relax with meds and pad after the events of the busy day. But it was worth it.
We had a wonderful time. Over the couple days, we talked like teenagers for hours about all the different things we had encountered over the past four years. We also enjoyed laughing at some of the crazy things we remembered as colleagues and coworkers. It was all good.
Our faith is very important to us and we found a place to worship Sunday morning before I headed home. While driving back, I had time to contemplate the importance of reconnecting with friendships and faith. All relationships take work. And it is important to make the effort to nurture them. I came home feeling refreshed. Although I may have physical discomforts, this past weekend was needed and deserved and I am thankful I made the right decision and went. It raised my spirits and added energy to my coping reserves which have been tested.
If you have a close friend or family you haven't seen in a while, find some way to reconnect. A phone call, a visit, an email, whatever way you can, reach out and make that connection. Perhaps your faith has been challenged. Seek to reconnect with that part of your life. Find positive people to be around and among. It will help you build strength and coping energy to deal with the painful areas and conditions you may have in your life.
Related Topics: Technorati Tags: pain management, family, friends, faith, connections
At first I was reluctant to travel due to a variety of issues, including physical limitations, but in the end I decided seeing my friend would be worth the effort.
My friend and I both suffer physical difficulties so we planned our time together with a lot of flexibility. We managed to travel into Baltimore Harbor and see some sights and enjoy some great food. We didn't push it. In fact, I was pro-active and put in an extra set of clothes right below my heating pad in my suitcase. I was determined to be prepared in case I needed to stay an extra night...and it turned out to be a good thing because I did indeed need to take the extra time and use it to relax with meds and pad after the events of the busy day. But it was worth it.
We had a wonderful time. Over the couple days, we talked like teenagers for hours about all the different things we had encountered over the past four years. We also enjoyed laughing at some of the crazy things we remembered as colleagues and coworkers. It was all good.
Our faith is very important to us and we found a place to worship Sunday morning before I headed home. While driving back, I had time to contemplate the importance of reconnecting with friendships and faith. All relationships take work. And it is important to make the effort to nurture them. I came home feeling refreshed. Although I may have physical discomforts, this past weekend was needed and deserved and I am thankful I made the right decision and went. It raised my spirits and added energy to my coping reserves which have been tested.
If you have a close friend or family you haven't seen in a while, find some way to reconnect. A phone call, a visit, an email, whatever way you can, reach out and make that connection. Perhaps your faith has been challenged. Seek to reconnect with that part of your life. Find positive people to be around and among. It will help you build strength and coping energy to deal with the painful areas and conditions you may have in your life.
Related Topics: Technorati Tags: pain management, family, friends, faith, connections
5 Comments:
I can not agree with you more about connecting with friends. The trauma that leaves me in pain very nearly killed me and stopped cold my former life. I have met a former colleague who went through a similar horrendous experience.
It was terrific to find someone who you could say to, "No I don't know what you went through, nor what you are going through now."
We had the greatest conversation about how people see us as our old selves again though they really have no idea.
We both have another big problem, and as a Secular Humanist it is especially big for me. I am a one in a million, I am missing nearly twenty percent of my frontal lobes yet I still retain a high IQ and astonish my doctors that I am not in a wheelchair drooling on myself.
I am sick and tired of people telling me that God saved me for some special task or reason. Oh yeah, what about those mass graves I saw while flying into Sarajevo, or the young dead soldiers I flew out of various countries around the world. Or the millions who will die because of "free trade" drug pricing for HIV drugs or stupid religious restrictions on condom use.
Comments about God saving me from people are upseting because they only manipulate the believer with guilt for something that was either the product of luck or science or both. Me they anger by their medieval ignorance.
I just wanted to tell you that I hope and pray you get the meds and help you need. I myself am 54 yrs. old and in chronic pain now for 14 years. 2 yrs. ago I was in a car wreck and had brain surgery, in 1990-1995 had 4 back surgeries and then in Mar. of 2007 got shot and lost my lower leg. I've had 4 post surgeries since then. I feel pain everyday of my life. The Drs. at the pain center put me on all kinds of drugs then finally found one that worked. It's oxycontin. I heard all the bad rap about the med. But I'm living proof that it is a "MIRACLE" drug. It gives you your life back. But when you lose your Dr. and have to ask a new Dr. for it ... you get the LOOK. So how in the world can we make it easier for people like us to get the drugs we need? I think I'm old enough to know what I need and don't need. I want to live what little bit of life I have left with dignity. How do I get the Dr. to understand this? Can you offer any suggestions? Thanks a lot. You can email me at cgsr76@yahoo.com.
rwmacevoy's comment motivated me to respond with my own comment. I also agree with the blog. We all can benefit from reconnecting with friends, family, and faith. On 7/20/08, after much anger and no contact for 9 years with my brother because of our mother's illness, death, and funeral, he called me and wanted to meet for lunch. It worked out well and was emotionally uplifting for both of us. But most importantly for me is faith in GOD. I have never felt that closeness and peace with GOD that so many Christians discuss. I'm often very angry with Him to the point of cursing Him. But I know I'm a Walking Miracle. In 2001 I had no symptoms but was diagnosed with three cerebral aneurysms that required two brain surgeries. (I wanted to be checked out for possible beginnings of Alzheimer's Disease). I was so scared and crying that my blood pressure 'shot up' to 180/100. While doing some Christian reading, GOD instantly took away my fear. My blood pressure stayed in the normal range throughout the whole experience. The neurosurgeon couldn't believe my calm, non-threatened behavior and told me I was in denial. NO - I rewrote my will, donated organs &/or body for research (can't do both), and paid for funeral services if my body wasn't accepted for research. I was in GOD'S hands and really felt it. The Doctor and staff couldn't believe how soon I independently decided to get up out bed and walk and how I made excellent recovery without any complications. I have no physical problems from the surgeries and I go dancing (to the point of perspiring "rain drops") twice a week. I know, without a doubt, that God used science to save me because He has some particular tasks He wants me to do - He made us to serve Him. I was not the product of luck or science. I'm living proof that GOD will love, forgive, and protect sinners. But what I don't understand is, why was GOD so good to me, a sinner who has even cursed Him, and yet others may have to suffer so greatly in comparison???
'LOOK, GOD IS GREATER THAN WE CAN UNDERSTAND..." (NLT Job 36:26)
Cgsr76 you are asking a question that I am dealing with myself. I take oxycontin myself along with tramadol and don’t receive near enough relief, but my condition is different. Any time you mention the need for help you end up feeling guilty or running up against bureaucratic (VA) walls on medication limits. My particular injury means that I am never without pain at some level and two oxycontin a day is near useless.
If oxycontin works for you, you should not feel any remorse asking for it. It is not a devil drug as many people paint it. As I’m sure you know by now a pain sufferer who needs it and uses it for its proper purpose is not usually some zoned out zombie. We all react differently to different medication, oxycontin actually functions like caffeine in me and keeps me awake, which I know is unusual and one reason it works for me. It also has no addictive effect on me which is also unusual. My ex-wife became addicted to oxycontin after back surgery and ransacked mine.
Doctor shopping for medication sounds so evil because it is something that people like my ex did just for their addiction. But doctor shopping for your legitimate pain needs is quite legitimate. Current medical views on pain speaks again and again about quality of life and even the ability of the immune system to do its job effectively under chronic pain. Some doctors understand this. Make an appointment with one and tell him up front why you are there tell him what you said here that pain medication has changed your life and how you function more effectively with them. Let him know this is a quality of life and general health issue. Also let them know that you may be open to a pain clinic trial, though most people I know who have been through those find little long term benefit. Keep trying until you find a doctor who will listen, they are out there.
As for me I will never break the law, never. But my curiosity has the best of me. I am signing up for a federally sanctioned medical marijuana study. I have been told that there is nothing available for my condition but pain relief. I have also heard that this is the only thing that has provided long term functional non-narcotic relief for the condition I have. I will not be able to use it if it works in the study. Maybe someone down the line will though.
To Christian Senior Citizen:
I carry a small steel marble in my pocket to help remind me of just how majestic an incredible this particular universe we live in is. I’ve flown to and visited all but one continent and marveled at the endless expanse of the Amazon and the Pacific and this Earth itself. Yet this entire galley with over 100 billion stars and expanding universe with over 400 billion galaxies all came from a singularity the size of my marble.
We are now at the point of seeing into those first seconds of our universe, which is probably just one of many. That marble reminds me that we are just bits of minute dust in this universe, and even less fleeting bits of time. Yet that is just what makes every single one of us so much more unique and special. We are fantastic, amazing, wonderful products of this natural world around us.
When the Emperor Constantine established the Christian religion as the official religion of the Roman Empire he started in motion the destruction of the greatest culture this world had ever seen. The Pagan polytheistic Greco-Roman society was the most tolerant and scientific progressive era in human history. Christianity was very unpopular and mildly persecuted in Rome because of its intolerance and unpatriotic attitudes. I recommend to anyone to read what little we have left of contemporary pagan writers in “Julian’s Against the Galileans” or “Porphry’s Against The Christians”. Unfortunately, these books are very small because the only remaining writing we have of these authors is from Church authors answering these Pagans very popular books, all of which the Church destroyed.
Christians in Rome would hiss, cross themselves, spit at Pagan temples and graveyards. They refused to sacrifice to Rome at a time when great victories had been won securing the Empire from serious threats. All the sacrifice amounted to was picking up a pinch of powder and tossing it into a flame. This was similar to saying the Pledge of Allegiance. Most Roman Pagans didn’t really believe in the official Roman Gods either and did it as a matter of respect and patriotism. It became very easy to hate these unpatriotic Christian snobs.
But the Christians won, now we have an intolerant world that believes that there is only one true way to the father. On the other side we have Muslims who believe there is one God and Allah is his Prophet. The Jews of Israel say they have West Bank legal rights because they were there 2,000 years ago. The Abrahamic Religions all have one thing in common, and that is the number One. One God, One Way and no other.
If only Christianity had failed the Dark Ages may never have begun, the dark specter of Islam my never have had a fertile ground for its seed in the 8th and 9th centuries. Learning and open minds in Asia Minor and in Egypt might still have been fertile instead of feuding over which part of the only way was the right way. Christianity made us myopic not only in religion as reflected by the inquisition, but destroyed science, literature and even art. We might have walked on the moon in the 16th century, we still can’t smelt bronze as good as the Greeks, and we haven’t improved on their logic.
You stated, “I know, without a doubt, that God used science to save me because He has some particular tasks He wants me to do - He made us to serve Him. I was not the product of luck or science. I'm living proof that GOD will love, forgive, and protect sinners.” Is that why Idi Amin died in luxury in Saudi Arabia because God protects sinners. Is that why it took so many years to finally get Radovan Karadzic, I saw his handiwork firsthand. No, there is no magic forgiveness, too many bad or evil people get away with it. The head of the big pharmaceuticals in this country are killing millions around the world and could care less, genocide, I bet they are Christians. If your God will forgive them for asking, he is a chump and a fool. In fact if he set up this whole “original sin” idea, he needs psychoanalysis, now. You quote Job, tell me you don’t believe in the Christian idea of the devil after reading that. The devil is not an evil being in the Old Testament just an antagonist nothing more. Just as there is no Hell in the Old Testament like the one Christians have created.
Read your Bible, Matthew is a rewrite of Mark. Check the fig tree story in both. Mark gave a quote that he states comes from Isaiah. "Behold, I send my messenger before thy face," it is really a literal quote of Exodus chapter 23 verse 20 in the Greek Septuagint, Matthew fixes it. There are tons of contradictions and historical impossibilities in this Word of God yet intelligent thinking people grasp it while the real world is so much more astounding and breathless.
“But we, wretched unbelievers, we bear our own burdens; we must say, ‘I myself did it, I. Not God, not Satan; I myself!’
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