Flashbacks can be good and they can be bad. Sometimes they can be really bad. I had one of those “really bad” types a few days ago, and it was not pleasant at all.

About two and a half years ago, I found myself in the midst of the worst pain I have known in my almost thirty years of life. Through the intricate web of youthful activities I involved myself in as a teenager and during my early twenties, I managed to weave for myself a lower back condition that I have to deal with every day. There are things I know not to do. There are things I simply can’t do. There are things I decide to do anyway and pay dearly for over the course of the following weeks (i.e. – roller coasters at Cedar Point). And it all came to a head some thirty months ago.

After a simple day of cleaning at church, I knelt down  to straighten two speaker wires on stage and felt a sharp pinch in my low back. Having had some moderate back pain before, I figured I had just “over-done-it” and my back was letting me know.

Not the case this time.

No, not at all. 

This time, I had finally placed the proverbial straw on the camel’s back. Only, it wasn’t a proverb or set of instructions I had messed up…it was my back.

After crawling through the sanctuary and laying on my back for about twenty minutes, I made the brilliant decision that it was time for me to go home. So, I hobbled out to the car and started the fifteen minute trek home. Not a long time in standard, just-heading-home dialect. But in “slipped-disc world,” that was an eternity to put unneeded pressure on an already injured area.

It only continued to get progressively worse from there. I could fill this post with a play-by-play of the next few day in order to get my point across that I really, REALLY hurt myself badly. But that is not the point here. Do know, however, that my next week of work was completely missed. I slept on my living room floor every night. I spent a day army crawling on my stomach to get around the house. I couldn’t stand but for ten seconds at a time before collapsing to the floor in agony. And capping off the whole experience was the fact that my Dad had to hold me up in order that I might use the restroom. This was no game. It was serious and it was incredibly painful.

And up until a few days ago, I really didn’t know where to place this whole experience in my mind. It was awful and I’ve learned what not to do in order that I don’t have to go through all that again. But it still was horrible. I figured it was to be placed forever in the “Life Just Sucks Sometimes” file. End of story.

But that is not the case.

In The Bible, God tells us that He “causes all things to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them.” (Romans 8:28) The key word in this is ALL. That means all. Everything. Good, bad, or ugly, all means all!

Now, back to a few days ago. I am at the office, ready to leave, and weary from a long day. A new patient calls in, gets directions, and heads our way around 3:00pm. So I’m thinking to myself, “This will be good thing. New patients are good. We’ll get her in and out well before 5:00pm, and that is also good. She just needs to get here so we can get rolling on this and I can go home.”

The next two hours found us still waiting for this person to show up. She had no cell phone and only a loose grip on the directional fortitude it would take to navigate herself here from Hodgenville. And on top of that, we were having a storm roll in. In simple terms…she was horribly late. And I was ready to leave.

Lo and behold, five o’clock rolls around and she rolls up into the parking lot. Apologetically, she explains that she was very lost and is so glad she finally found us. I, on the other hand, was getting more angry with this woman by the moment. She was late, ignorant, and causing me to stay severely overtime on a day that I just wanted to go home.

So, the at-least-one-hour-long new patient procedure began. Paperwork (slowly), consultation (slowly), exam (slowly) and x-rays (even more slowly). I just swallowed down the fact that I would be at work until 6:30 and dealt with it. My tone quickly changed, though, when I performed the examination on her.

After one particular test, her back went into spasm, a severe and incredibly painful reaction to the pinching of a nerve. You see, she was dealing with precisely the same issue I had a few years ago. And in that moment where her pain became completely tangible, I was shell-shocked. My heart broke completely. I saw in the agony on her face the exact same pain I had once felt. The pain that I would never wish upon my worst enemy. The pain that I can still remember with such precision that it can make me nauseous.

And as this occurred, my heart did a 180. From angry and impatient to kind and willing to do whatever was in my power to help this woman. From self-centered and judgemental to giving and understanding.

What provoked this? Where did this come from?

Simple. An honest response to a familiar situation. I could truly empathize with this woman, and God used that to leverage kindness and humility in my heart. Where I was so caught up in my time and my wants and my needs, I found myself humbled once God used a past hurt to open my eyes to someone else’s similar pain.

And that’s the point. Situations that cause pain, fear, worry and doubt are so quickly discarded as unnecessary and useless. We plead with God to remove them and protect us from them. We hope “it will never happen to me.” And I’m here to tell you, you can hope in one hand and crap in the other and see which one gets full first.

Problems will come.

Pain will come.

Fear will come.

Worry will come.

So what will you do with them when they do? Will you discard them as annoyance? As irritation? As a something that disrupts your happiness and contentedness? If I’m honest, that’s what I do. But I’m learning in my life to find God’s work in the midst of the difficult stuff. When I’m sweating and sick to my stomach and tired and achy and weary and worn down, I’m learning that it is in those times that God is teaching me something. And in my poor devotion to Him, I fail to see it most times. But sometimes, I get it. Sometimes I learn. I see His devotion and faithfulness to me right in the middle of my lack of faithfulness to Him. I see His goodness in response to my weakness. I see a God who truly causes all things to work together for my good. I see faithfulness in unfaithfulness…and it blows my mind.