Joni Eareckson Tada: Sharing Hope

Speaker 1

I pray for a lot of people who battle with chronic pain. Hi, I'm Joni Eareckson Tada. And I do this because, as you know, I deal with chronic pain as well. Now, you may ask, how can a quadriplegic who cannot feel feel pain? Well, good question. But it's not the sort of pain you'd feel from, let's say, a torn muscle or a shoulder injury. It's more like neuropathic pain, the kind associated with severe diabetes. However you want to define it, though, it still hurts. And it hurts really bad. As you've heard me say, my struggle with pain makes my quadriplegia feel like a walk in the park.

People often ask how I manage my pain. Well, first, I never let myself be unpleasantly surprised by how much I hurt. I once read in a magazine for cyclists in the Tour de France that world-class athletes deal with pain by practicing detachment. It says detachment entails separating your thoughts and emotions from your perceptions about the pain. Realize that you don't have to think negative thoughts and experience unpleasant emotions just because you are in intense pain. Instead of thinking, "I hate it when it hurts this bad," think, "I've been here before and I've gotten through it. This is nothing new." Simply recognizing that you always have a degree of freedom to choose your emotions—boy, that's half the battle. I think that monitoring pain this way is great advice.

So when the fangs of intense pain sink deep into my hips and back, that's my signal to practice a little biblically based detachment. I start by deep breathing, slow and steady. And when fiery pain threatens to consume me with fear, just as the flames threaten to consume Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in that fiery furnace, I have a conversation with my pain. I do not say, "Oh, I can't stand this, it's killing me." Because words like that are fraught with anxiety and fear, as we know from the Bible, only makes things worse. Instead, I calmly ask Jesus to meet me in my pain, to not let it crush me. And the Son of God never fails to meet me, just as he met those three Hebrews in that hot furnace of fire.

And what does Jesus say to me in that agonizing place? Well, he comforts me with his own words. He'll say something like, "Joni, my spirit inspired Second Corinthians, chapter 4, verse 8, for a good reason. For although you, Joni, are hard pressed on every side, you will not be crushed." Wow, what a promise. Pain may tighten its vice grip, but it cannot crush me.

And here's another promise: the way I read Psalm 42, verses 10 and 11, is like a conversation between me and my fears because the psalmist says, "My bones suffer mortal agony as my foes and fears taunt me, saying to me all day long, 'Where is your God?'" But I say, "Why, my soul, are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise you, my God and my Savior." As I cling to God's promises—and there are many—my pain pushes me further into Jesus' heart.

So if you are in pain, visit jonnyradio.org, where I posted a video in which I share more about managing pain. I also have a free book for you by Dr. John Piper. It's called "Shaped by Feeling and Thinking in Tune with the Psalms." As I said, choosing your emotions is half the battle when it comes to managing pain. And Dr. Piper's book is a great resource, and so is my video at jonnyradio.org. Visit us today.