“I am losing my energy and I am so tired of this pain—so tired of searching for answers—I can’t stand to visit one more doctor and tell him about my fourteen-year battle with chronic pain. . .” As my friend talks about...
Hirshel Jaffe, called The Running Rabbi says, “For over 20 years as a rabbi, before my illness, I had helped others through crisis. I was supposed to have all the answers. Yet when I got sick, I discovered I didn’t have them. I felt confused, frightened and desperate. My experience with serious illness has made me want to share with you what I’ve learned.
When my physicians noticed how depressed I was in the hospital, they said, ‘Be a rabbi—go and counsel other patients.’ I did, and my energy and zest for life came back.”
Are you feeling gloomy and depressed or overwhelmed by all the bad news in your life? Isaiah has some advice for us. “Offer your food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then your light shall rise in...
After I’d been out of commission for a few months, my pastor made a passing reference to “these chronic conditions.” I corrected him—my condition wasn’t chronic, it was just slow to abate. Now, five years on, I still don’t know what to call my dis-ease and wonder whether I will ever feel “normal” again. But my dictionary defines chronic as “persisting for a long time,” and there’s no denying it’s been a long time.
If I resist the word “chronic,” I hesitate to claim “pain” as the problem. I’ve told doctors often that I don’t really have pain. Rather, various discomforts and malfunctions, sometimes manageable, sometimes incapacitating, have wreaked havoc with my life and expectations.
Confronting God Loss and grief are everywhere in the landscape of our lives. There is nothing in human life to which we are attached that is permanent and unchanging. There is no deep or lasting bond which is not...
