In 2011, I was planting a small perennial in our garden. As I finished, I stood up, and a pain shot through my back that nearly knocked me down. I thought I had pulled a muscle. What I would find out was that I had a ruptured disk. For the next seven to eight months, pain became my constant companion.
Simple
things – taking a shower, putting on socks, tying shoelaces, getting into a car
– became tests of “how to do it without yelling in pain.” Walking at a
30-degree angle, I used a cane, which helped. To walk from handicapped parking,
carrying my laptop case was a challenge. Rainy days, requiring an umbrella,
made the walk a struggle.
I was
prescribed opiods, which helped. But the pain never really went away. I knew
there must be a point to all of this – something to learn or understand. I kept
telling myself there had to be a point. The pain was changing my personality
(ask my wife). It didn’t help to hear a senior executive tell me I would never
really be healed.
My
experience was seven years too early for Finding
Purpose: Rediscovering Meaning in a Life with Chronic Illness by Cindee Snifer Re.
She knows what it is to live with chronic illness; she has Ehlers-Danlos, a
genetic connective tissue disorder accompanied by a host of co-existing conditions.
Four of Re’s five children also have Ehlers-Danlos.
Re could
have slipped permanently into despair and depression, and there likely have
been times when she’s experienced both. But she made a choice to find purpose
in what was happening to her and her family, and to go on to help found Chronic Joy, a ministry aimed squarely at
people who live with chronic illness.
Finding Purpose is the second of four books/workbooks
addressing chronic illness. The first was Discovering
Hope: Beginning the Journey Toward Hope in Chronic Illness, published
in 2016, and the third, Embracing Worth,
will be published later this year. The fourth, Encountering Joy, will be published next year.
The book
contains 10 chapters. Each is structured roughly the same: a short
introduction, often a story or anecdote; questions to answer and a Bible verse
to consider; an assignment or two for the week; and pages available for journal
entries. The 10 topics covered are presence, lectio divina, willingness, surrender,
love, purpose, refining, attitude, contentment, and choice. The book also
contains an appendix of resources, including pointers for creating discussion
groups, how to build a local ministry, and other helpful tools.
 |
| Cindee Snider Re |
Re knows
of what she speaks. She’s lived this. And she’s lived each of the entries in
this book. Finding Purpose is a great resource for anyone living with chronic pain
– and anyone living with a person who deals daily with chronic pain.
In my own
case, two things happened. Elders and pastors at my church prayed over me and
my back. And my ruptured disk eventually did what happens 70 percent of the
time – it dissolved. It took a few months for my brain to understand that the
cause of the pain was removed. But I was susceptible to reinjuring my back, and
it was through the help of physical therapists and a personal trainer that I
learned how to do things differently. I still had to be careful; my back went
out when we were in London in 2014, and the pain was excruciating.
But Re is
right. It is possible to fund purpose with chronic illness. It doesn’t make the
pain or the severity of the illness better. But it does allow you to understand
and deal with it.
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