Celebrate Independence from pain!
For those seeking independence from pain the Fourth of July may not seem a day for celebrating liberty. The same could be said of those dependent on pain killers. But Tim Mitchinson offers hope for Declaring our independence from pain and the need for pain killers in his June 29 article in the ChicagoTribune.
The article begins below and is followed by a link to read the whole article. As one who has also found independence from pain through the same course of action, I encourage you to click through for the whole story and consider declaring your independence this Fourth of July.
Declaring our independence from pain
I love the Fourth of July! I anticipate cooking hamburgers on the grill, watching the fireworks with my children and thanking God for the wise men and women whose sacrifices gave us this wonderful country. I am humbled when I think of the genius that gave us the Declaration of Independence, and the courage and strength of those who signed it.
While we often think of issues of freedom in our personal lives, many people today do not feel free because they feel imprisoned in physical pain. Millions of Americans are turning to prescription and over-the-counter medications to manage their pain. Unfortunately, this can sometimes turn into a dependency on and abuse of various medications, such as oxycodone.
Trying to find not just a way to manage pain, but actual freedom from it, 46% of the respondents in a 2011 survey conducted by the National Center for Health Statistics, The Center for Disease Control and the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine believed that prayer was a form of alternative medicine and engaged it regularly to help relieve their physical pain.
Does this surprise you? It doesn’t surprise me. For me, and others, prayer is even more than an alternative or complementary form of healthcare – it is my primary source for well-being. I actually turn to prayer for my health on a daily basis. You could call it my form of daily medicine and staying well. Why? A simple answer is that it works for me. I have found prayer effective in not just managing pain, but healing it. It has also helped me overcome illness and fatigue.
Let me give you an example. One day a few years ago, I was moving a cement planter from the front porch to the garage, and suddenly I felt something tear in my back. I dropped the planter and it broke. I fell to the ground, and barely able to get up, I called my wife for assistance. She helped me into the house.
I knew that I could turn to God in prayer for help. Now prayer means different things to different individuals, but to me prayer often begins as an acknowledgement of God’s great healing love for each of us. This unconditional love is for everyone. No one is left out. There is a Bible passage that I turned to that day and thought about a great deal. It states, “For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom 8: 38, 39).