No, you haven’t accidentally landed on the Mayo Clinic website. Although they and many other medical professionals have much to say about this topic!
So, what started me down this particular path? As I near the 2-year mark of Dale’s death, I was looking for a way to describe the effects of being sad for so long. In a sense, I was trying to explain the phenomenon of second-year widowhood being harder than the first. And as I’ve heard some widows say, “Years three and four ain’t no picnic either!” Great…
Anyway, as I thought about these past 22 months of emotional pain, I couldn’t help but draw the analogy to that of people suffering from chronic PHYSICAL pain. And with my ever-present friend, Google, I unearthed some sobering facts from well-respected medical sources. Most arrived at very similar conclusions.
The effects of long-term chronic pain read like a medical horror film, both physically and mentally. Here’s a sampling of what I found on my search:
- Increased blood pressure
- Increased heart rate
- Reduced ability to fight off illness and disease
- Tense muscles
- Limited ability to move
- Lack of energy
- Change in appetite
- Increased risk of dementia
- Diminished cognitive ability
- Depression
- Anxiety
- Difficulty sleeping
- Anger
- Lack of motivation
- Less interest in rewards
Yikes! Made me send an immediate prayer up to God thanking Him for keeping me relatively healthy with very little pain. To my friends with chronic pain, I’m so sorry for what you deal with on a daily basis. May God give us all a heart of compassion for anyone suffering like this.
So my foray into this medical discovery gave me a bit of a pause. I do believe there is a strong tie between our emotional state and our physical well-being.
However, for me personally, I would not go so far as to claim that my long-term EMOTIONAL pain resulted in all of those bullet points. But they have certainly been sprinkled, sometimes generously, over these past months since I lost Dale. The good news is that I will ALWAYS take a chocolate reward. 😊
I changed my Google search from “effects of long-term chronic pain” to “effects of long-term grief.” I bet you can guess what I found.
Yep – MANY of the same symptoms showed up in both searches. Chronic pain had more physical symptoms and chronic grief more emotional, but the similarities were striking.
My unscientific hypothesis was that long-term grief did, in fact, suffer many of the same symptoms that long-term physical pain did. It did not take long to confirm that, albeit without any of the necessary regression analyses usually required! (Sorry, the statistician in me snuck out…)
But in this case, it’s not necessary to back up what I found with solid scientific methods. It’s enough to see that suffering either physically or mentally can result in additional challenges and risks.
For me, it helps put a bit of a definition on why this second year has been harder – and in many ways doesn’t seem to be improving. Simply put – I’ve been sad for a long time and the cumulative effect is noticeable to me.
If I stopped there, this would be a very pathetic blog post! Hopefully, most of you know me well enough to expect some sort of positive spin on this, right?
This subject easily falls under my teaching of joy and sorrow coexisting in our lives.
Yes, all the above is true for me. The longer I’m without Dale, the sadder and lonelier I am.
BUT…I continue to grow in my understanding of how God walks with me, blessing me in ways that I would never experience without this trial. A deep, real-world faith doesn’t grow from a bed of roses. In some ways, it rises from the ashes of our broken lives. But it DOES rise. And therein lies my joy and my hope.
God shows me daily how much He loves me by guiding my steps on this journey, blessing me with friends who still pray for me, giving me a purpose during this season of my life, and reminding me that, in the end, He makes everything right again.
In this quick fix-it world in which we live, please remember that so many people are suffering either physically or mentally or both. Have grace. Be kind. Be patient. Be informed. Be a blessing.
Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another,
as God in Christ forgave you.
Ephesians 4:32
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