Migraine Musings Part V
“Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying,
’See, the home of God is among mortals.
He will dwell with them;
they will be his peoples,
and God himself will be with them;
he will wipe every tear from their eyes.
Death will be no more;
mourning and crying and pain will be no more,
for the first things have passed away.’
And the one who was seated on the throne said, ‘See, I am making all things new.’ Also he said, ‘Write this, for these words are trustworthy and true.’ Then he said to me, ‘It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give water as a gift from the spring of the water of life. Those who conquer will inherit these things, and I will be their God and they will be my children.”
Lesson 5: Don’t Give Up
I talk a lot about my migraines but there is one story I rarely tell. It’s a hard one to say out loud and it has even been hard to write it here; but I’m going to do it, because it is an important story.
When I was twelve I got my first compound migraine. I got sick and threw up for two days straight. I had headaches on both sides of my head (migraines usually occur on the left or right side of the brain) and was so dehydrated (my primary headache trigger) that they kept restarting; compounding the pain. My parents were gone (this is the only time I remember both my parents being away at the same time) so my brother took me to the hospital. However, we were both minors so he couldn’t authorize the hospital to give me any pain killers.
In my memories, they didn’t have an actual hospital bed so I was on a metal table but that’s probably a projectection of the pain I was in. I do clearly remember laying in a hospital room for hours unable to get relief while my headache got worse and worse. As the pain mounted, I made myself a promise. I swore that when I got home, I would kill myself. I didn’t have the capacity to make a plan or to understand the ramifications of such an act in the midst of that pain. I only knew I never wanted to feel that pain ever again and that I would find a way to end my existence rather than return to it. Even if my soul didn’t survive; oblivion was better than the agony.
This was the moment that I first felt the most universal human emotion: despair.
It is difficult to tell that story. Even now, I am anxious recalling a time in my life when I was so desperate for relief that death seemed a mercy. But it’s important that I do it. Because, at some point in their lives, every single person on earth feels that.
Every human on this planet has a moment when they look at the world around them and lose hope; when he or she or they truly believe that death, even if death is nothingness, is a better option than the life they are currently living.
If you haven’t felt that: Good, I am glad. I hope it’s a long time before you do.
If you have, you’re not alone.
For many of us the despair of 2020 hasn’t come all at once. It isn’t a rushing pierce of pain in the head or a singular traumatic event that cuts through our hearts like a hot knife in butter.
No, the despair of 2020 has crept into our hearts as we watched the number of COVID-19-related deaths rise slowly. It lingered in our souls as we saw cities burn and read the names of those unjustly killed because of their race or gender or sexuality. It flooded us as storms damaged the fields, homes and communities of ourselves and our loved ones. It burst into our hearts as we watched explosions decimate cities and economies, heard stories of exploited children, and waited seemingly unceasingly for justice to arrive. It clawed at us when we saw leaders on every side fail to help. Perhaps more than anything else the collective failure of humanity to treat one another with compassion and dignity has cast a long and dark shadow on our spirits.
I wish it wasn’t that way.
I wish that pain wasn’t a part of our lives.
But it is.
It’s the pain of sickness that goes far beyond an air-born virus. It’s the pain of isolation. The lament of injustice, of racism, and riots. The fragility of privileged people changing the channel or making excuses while those who can’t, suffer. It’s the grief of losing people and being unable to mourn them properly. It’s the anguish of a planet in need of our care. It’s the desperation of a people so afraid of the reality of our broken world that we ignore it for narratives that affirm our beliefs and our self-righteousness. It’s the ache of helplessness and inactivity. It’s the agony of economic instability and unemployment. It’s the misery that we witness, experience, and fight against every day.
I have to name it. I have to say that it is real and it is hard. I need to acknowledge that the temptation is to just flee from all of it, because, if I don’t, then what comes next loses all meaning.
If we don’t see the earth, and humanity, and ourselves in all their brokenness then we can’t understand what it means for God to make all things new; for that pain and suffering to pass away and to bring about, not just “okay” or stability, but newness beyond our wildest imaginations. A new start, a brand new way of being, a wholeness we’ve never known before.
Despair might be the most universal emotion. Hopeless surrender might be the great human temptation.
God’s faithfulness is stronger than both.
I chose a passage from Revelation for our final verse because we so often see the end of the world as a bad thing.
You see, back when I was 12 years old and in more pain than I had ever experienced I thought that there were only two options: pain or death. But, eventually, my brother spoke to my parents, the doctor administered IV fluids, and the cycle of dehydration and pain ended. I remember stopping at the video store on the way home to rent my favorite movie at the time, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. We watched it as soon as I woke up the next day. Then, we watched it again; and again; and again. Somewhere between lying in the hospital bed and seeing the end credits of that film for the third time, the vow I made to do anything in order to never experience such pain again, was overwhelmed by God’s promise that there was more to life than death and pain.
In the years since then, God has kept that promise.
In seventeen years, I have lost count of the migraines but I can tell you how many times I’ve fallen in love with a hobbit named Chris. How often I have been hugged and kissed by those who care about me. I can tell you what it feels like to fly through the clouds at sunset and swim in the ocean with a thousand fish. I can regale you with stories of good food and fantastic drinks, of pizza and nights watching fireworks on rooftops.
I could tell you about the first time I held each of my nieces and nephews. I can describe to you the exact moment during my ordination when I knew that every struggle I had overcome was worth it to be the pastor at First Lutheran. I can show you the flowers I held on my wedding day, the picture of Rosie the day we adopted her and all of the people who helped me get to this place in life. I can share a thousand of the wonderful things in my life and keep some to myself too.
My world as I knew it ended 22 years ago when I got my first migraine. It ended again when I was 12 and I thought death was a better alternative to my illness. It ended when I broke up with my first real partner. When I failed my first internship. It ended when I moved far from my family and when friends moved away from me. It ended when I got married and when I got a dog. It has ended ten times since then and it will end a hundred times more before I return to dust.
Every time my world ended, God created a new one. Each time I was too afraid to face the darkness, God filled it with light. I have experienced a new creation each time my world as I knew it ended and that creation has always been far deeper, richer and more whole than I ever knew it could be. “New” brings beauty and goodness, but it also brings new challenges and adjustments. Growth is painful and slow; our brains crave predictability and patterns, and we ache as we adjust to what is created new in our lives. But the beauty is worth it. The wholeness is worth it. The new depths we are able to reach in our world, in our society, in our relationships and in ourselves is worth it.
That is why the final lesson I leave you with is this: Don’t give up. Don’t give up on life, on your faith, your family or yourself. It’s okay to despair and to be tempted to hopeless surrender. It’s okay to shift expectations and redefine what life looks like. That’s okay as long as you don’t completely abandon hope that life will come out of death; a new world will begin as the old one passes away.
My prayer for you and yours amidst this time is not that the world doesn’t end. It’s that you come to know that the new world God creates, with all of its growth pains and aching changes, is so much deeper, wider and richer than you could ever dream.