Heart (Hard) Lessons

Long time in between blogs for me, but I’m gonna do my best to scrape something together…

Trigeminal Neuralgia is a beast. Pain is always present. It’s like background music that’s always playing with intermittent spikes of blaring, loud, banging sounds.

Here’s the cycle I’m currently experiencing. Pain is unmanageable. It feels like a scab has been ripped off from a sore inside my mouth and searing pain moves through my gum, around my tongue and down through my jaw to beneath my chin. I mean we’re talking, off the chart, white knuckle pain. Keeps me up at night. Stops me in the middle of a sentence when I ‘m speaking. Forces me to eat on one side of my mouth with the hope that any kind of salt, sweet or spice doesn’t flow over to the other side because if it gets near that one spot on my gum, the pain bolts through me, causing a flare up that expands to my ear and up to my scalp that could last for hours.  It’s just no-fun, really intense pain.

Medications help, but come with a cost. As the pain gets increasingly worse, the doctor increases the dose, which allows me to eat, drink and speak with low-grade pain. But side effects of the medication also increase. I’m foggier and sleepier, all of the time. My organizational skills have been demolished to a level so low that I now understand the challenges of people who have trouble focusing. I can no longer quickly and efficiently manage the daily tasks of our lives. Reminders, notes and calendars have become my best friends.  I fumble and drop things more. My creativity- well, it’s gone. I’m gaining weight at a rate that is so incredibly disturbing. And I’m losing my hair. I can’t find words or hold onto thoughts for very long. It’s like my mind can see something, but when I go to grasp it, it’s just beyond my reach. But at least that horrible pain is tempered. Until it’s not and the cycle begins all over again.

As I was meditating on this, I heard a voice say, “these are heart days.” I thought on that for a while. Did the voice mean hard days, because that made more sense to me. But, nope. When I checked back in, it was definitely ‘heart’ days. So I began to ponder, what is my heart wanting me to learn through this experience?

I’ve explored the emotions that come along with this pain. There’s been a LOT of sadness and depression; a sense of hopelessness as I look to a future filled with pain. And anger. That’s definitely present as well.

And I quickly fall right back into a pattern of beating myself up; it’s my go-to response if I’m not consciously focusing on re-wiring this old habit. And in these longer periods of sadness, I begin to judge myself.  It sounds like this: “Why am I sad?! Look at this beautiful life I’ve got. So what if I have some pain. Toughen up and deal with it!”

Along with that, I identify the belief that if I were more spiritual, if I was better at this whole ‘life’ thing, sadness and depression wouldn’t be present in my life at all. That somehow these are ‘bad’ feelings and if I were better, I wouldn’t have to feel them. This is a tricky way my ego pulls me back to that pattern of beating myself up.

But when I can get that pesky ego out of the way, and listen to my heart, I remember the truth: having those tough feelings, even the intense pain, they’re all opportunities for me to learn something. It’s part of my spiritual curriculum and why I’m here in this lifetime. And I hear a phrase that I learned so many years ago, “How you relate to the issue is the issue.” And I recognize that part of the opportunity for me is to be more gentle with myself and continue to work on rewiring that pattern in my life that no longer serves me.

Of course, I’d like to know the why’s of all of this. Along with learning to stave off my knee-jerk reaction to beat myself up, there are some awarenesses that come forward around surrender and trust. Another gentle reminder to remember that everything is unfolding perfectly for my Higher learning.

The more specific lessons around the pain have yet to be revealed. Again, a lesson in surrender because the truth is, they may never be revealed to me in this lifetime.

So.

I do my best to celebrate my wins.  Even the small ones, like when I remember to get dinner going or complete tasks that used to be so simple for me, like updating our accounts or doing laundry, getting our taxes done. …Or writing my first blog in months.

Writing has always been cathartic for me. It helps me process my challenges and was very helpful as I moved through my experience with breast cancer. So I share this blog with similar intentions- hoping that it may help someone along the way.

Because despite the pain, I remain tremendously humbled by the privilege and blessings I’ve been gifted in this lifetime. Oh my gosh- I get to experience loving and being loved every single day.  So I’ll do my best to continue to enjoy these gifts and rise above so that I can focus on my heart and not the hard lessons.

In loving,

Sarah

PS- It was only as I posted this blog on my new website that I realized I’d inadvertently created the next blog in my “Alphabet Blog” series that I started so long ago. H is for Heart (hard) Lessons. Spirit works in wonderful ways.