Making sense out of pain

My mom has cancer. She just recently was put on in home hospice to help control her pain and manage her symptoms. (She is living with us right now.) She has been very tired and had been sleeping 20 hours per day. The hospice doctor put her on Ritalin which is used for people with attention deficit disorder to help with her energy. The combination of sustained release morphine for pain control and Ritalin for energy has been a great combination for her. (Plus a few dozen other medications to manage her other symptoms. It takes 15 minutes just to sort out her medications for the next day.) Her pain has been at zero almost all the time and she has been sitting up and visiting for several hours per day. She has been talking "a lot".

Mostly, she has been telling stories about her life. Family members have been coming to see her and they have been having a wonderful time remembering the funny, crazy, and sweet events that have built our family memories.

As she nears the end of her life, she still has some questions about the purpose of pain. People way smarter than I am have struggled with this same question. Does pain have a purpose? Why does God allow us to hurt?

Does pain serve a purpose? It gives us information. It tells us when something is wrong. If you have a rock in your shoe, your foot sends a signal to your brain, you process the information, then you stop and take the rock out of your shoe. It prevents further damage from happening to your foot. People that don't feel pain can end up damaging themselves because they don't notice when they are doing something hurtful. People who have Leprosy don't register pain signals correctly and end up with sores and damaged skin because they didn't have pain.

Phillip Yancey, wrote a wonderful book called "Where is God when it hurts?". He says "Theologians blithely attribute pain to the Fall, ignoring the marvelous design features of the pain system. Every square millimeter of the body has a different sensitivity to pain, so that a speck of dirt may cause excruciating pain in the vulnerable eye whereas it would go unreported on the tough extremities....The pain system automatically ramps up hypersensitivity to protect an injured part (explaining why a sore thumb always seems in the way) and turns down the volume in the face of emergencies (soldiers often report no pain from a wound in the course of battle, only afterwards). Pain serves us subliminally as well: sensors make us blink several times a minute to lubricate our eyes and shift our legs and buttocks to prevent pressure sores. Pain is the most effective language the body can use to draw attention to something important."

We need to have a framework to explain the purpose of pain before we get to the place where we need it. Too often we see pain as God's big mistake (along with mosquitoes). I realize that pain has a purpose and our pain sensors are part of our intricately designed bodies, but I still don't like it. One of the amazing facts Phillip Yancey talks about in his book is how when scientists tried to design a system for people who couldn't feel pain to tell them when they should stop doing something that would cause them damage, the patients just overrode the signal to go ahead and do what they wanted to do. It wasn't until the scientists attached an electric shock to the signal that the patients would stop what they were doing that was self damaging. What does that tell me about human nature?

I also think pain helps us to feel compassion, caring, and empathy for those who are hurting. I think it makes us more careful and gentle with one another. When I understand someone else's pain, I am more tender and loving. Somehow though, someone else's headache is never as bad as mine.

Understanding the purpose and gift of pain only works for me until the next time I hit my head on the open cupboard door or stub my toe in the middle of the night, but I'm working on it.