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Posts Tagged ‘physical’

More than a MARGIN-al Difference

Posted in Guest Post, WONDER, tagged clock, contributing, double hockey sticks, Dr. Richard Swenson, emotional, financial, Margin, more than a marginal difference, physical, spiritual, why am I creating margin on February 24, 2013| 2 Comments »

Dave and Susie are the bloggers at Double Hockey Sticks. They write about marriage, conflict … life.

I love reading their posts, and I feel I am becoming quite acquainted with this pair.

It always intrigues me when I read a post that seems to be exactly what I had been pondering, and that is the case when I read Why I Am Creating Margin.

The concept of margin is something that my hubby introduced to me a few years back when his medical doctor introduced him to the book, Margin, by Richard Swenson.

Like the crisp, clean space around a piece of loose-leaf paper, margin in all areas of our lives is not just a helpful, but a healthy thing to save, to plan for, to protect. In our lives today, margin is not a common concept.

We live financially from paycheck to paycheck.

We live physically medicating our ailments rather than get the rest, the physical activity, the healthy eating that could prevent some of those problems in the first place.

We live emotionally … wait, no we do not live emotionally! We live medicated due to stress and worry and fear that something might happen that stops us from ‘contributing’ to society.

We live tied to the clock!

All of this, margin-less living, means that we need to live our lives in such a way as to keep the machine going. This hinders us from living the passion-filled lives … in our jobs, in our communities (school, church, recreation), in our relationships with those we love, that our Creator breathed life into us to live.

Give the blog of Dave and Susie a read, or take a peek at the website of Dr. Richard Swenson, and consider what the margin in your life looks like.

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A Picture of Pain

Posted in life, WONDER, tagged broken heart, C. S. Lewis, Heartache, heartbreak, Pain, physical, picture, picture of pain, Sadness, spritiual, The Problem of Pain on April 16, 2012| 2 Comments »

It was a beautiful painting. As I stood before the gorgeous combination of colors. The vision of mountains and sky. The strokes of the painters brush … the strokes of a painter of passion, a painter of purpose.

It is a pictorial representation of that familiar description of the aura one having a migraine is often known to speak of. So, in the midst of her beautiful painting, is something like a hole. This ‘hole’ makes the painting look flawed to the point of being painful to view.

One of her purposes in creating this painting was to create a visual for her doctor, to show him what it is she experiences. It could be said that her painting is the picture of the pain no one sees, except for her.

Another picture of pain could be an x-ray, to confirm a broken bone. Or an ultrasound to confirm an ectopic pregnancy.

Sometimes the picture of pain can also be vicarious. Just the other morning a friend was telling me of a sports injury that her husband had suffered. He had thought he had broken a bone, but now it looks more like the muscle was torn from the bone. Just hearing about it caused a shiver down my spine, as I vicariously imagined the pain that must cause.

These are pictures that are bright with the colors of pain.

There is other pain that is more difficult to see, more difficult to experience. It is the pain of the emotion, of the heart. This kind of pain is not visible, like fall colors, but it is hidden in the shadows of our heart.

For people to know that you are suffering with this kind of pain, the one in pain needs to share their experience. I refer to his as bleeding publicly. This unseen pain can be the most mentally, spiritually and even physically altering pain.

The only visual that one suffering the ravages of hidden pains, is one of a hand gripped around ones heart, squeezing tighter and tighter, just to the point that would end it’s pulsing, and the relief of final death.

A broken heart rarely does stop beating. It keeps going, and the pain continues. Gradually it subsides, and the pain lessens. But the scar tissue is permanent, and the person carries their scars, like an amputee carries their scars. We may go to our grave concealing our greatest pains, our greatest injuries.

These scars recreate us. Others may never see our heartaches, but they will see the picture that the pain has created in our re-created self.

“Mental pain is less dramatic than physical pain,

but it is more common and also more hard to bear.

The frequent attempt to conceal mental pain increases the burden:

it is easier to say

“My tooth is aching”

than to say

“My heart is broken.””

C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain

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