Living In Chronic Pain: How It Started and the Hope That Followed
God sees our future and knows where He will divinely lead us. He knows what He will carry us through – often before we even realize we’ve been in His arms the entire time. If you are living in chronic pain and don’t know where to turn, you can find freedom even in the hardest of circumstances.
The Before: Life Before Chronic Pain
My story is now split in two – “before” and “after” October 15, 2013.
Summer 2013 brought wedding planning and tremendous joy as I waited to marry my husband, Marc.
With most of our wedding plans in place and our honeymoon booked, I did not see coming what I endured in late July and early August.
One month before our wedding, I was rushed to the ER with an extremely swollen leg. My entire leg, thigh down to calf, was about three-sizes bigger than normal. I had a DVT (deep vein thrombosis) in my upper-right thigh.
Up until this point, I was quite healthy and very active. I had ran a couple half marathons and had never really experienced any health issues.
The morning after I got home from the hospital, I woke up with excruciating pain in the clotted leg. Back to the ER I went and was met with the crushing news I had developed additional blood clots up and down my right leg.
At this point, I was re-admitted to the hospital for another week and instead of getting last-minute items prepared for our wedding, I was laying in a hospital bed. Unsure if I’d be able to walk down the aisle on my wedding day.
We had to cancel our honeymoon and I came home on crutches, with our wedding only a couple weeks away.
With some determination and sheer will, I was able to set the crutches aside the morning of our wedding and walk down the aisle to my husband.
I share this part of the story because sitting here now and thinking back, at that time, it was the hardest thing I’d ever gone through.
I didn’t understand. Why did God, who is sovereign over all things, allow me to get the clots in the first place? Why did I have to experience my wedding while hardly able to walk?
I may never know. But I know this – He is sovereign. He is sovereign over all things and He knew exactly what He was doing and what lay ahead.
The Accident
We had been married a short 7 weeks and it was Tuesday morning October 15, 2013. My co-worker had picked me up for our commute to work in Midland.
We were on US-10 in front of Dow Corning when a deer ran out from the median. My friend swerved to avoid it, but in the process, cut-off a giant tanker semi at 70 miles-per-hour.
We were slammed in the back of her vehicle. The force of the collision caused her car to tumble over and over front-over-end off the expressway.
I was in the front passenger seat with my seat belt on, but the semi’s impact broke my seat, leaving me in a reclined position. As we flipped off the expressway, I slid out from under my seatbelt and was ejected through the rear-view window.
My friend who was driving was thankfully unharmed. As witnesses stopped to see if we were ok, they found only one person in the car.
I was gone, roughly 70 feet away and thrown clear across the road.
She had to get down and convince the witnesses to look for me. If she had been incapacitated, the witnesses and first responders would not have known I was in the car that day.
They found me in some bushes and shrubs. I must have been awake (although I have no memory of it) because I had given my Dad’s cell number to the kind people who helped search for me.
They called my Dad and told him to come now – that I was alive but it didn’t look good. They didn’t think I was going to make it. My Dad said he called my Uncle Eric, who was close to the scene, to get there as quickly as possible. He said he didn’t want me to die alone.
The entire morning was an absolute miracle. The doctor’s couldn’t believe I didn’t have any life-threatening internal injuries as a result of being completely ejected from the car and on top of that, being on a blood thinner. (I was still on blood thinners from the clots mentioned above). I remember my hematologist telling me prior to the accident that I couldn’t play any contact sports, if I slipped and fell, or hit my head I might have to go in and get looked at because of the potential risk for internal bleeding those activities would cause.
There is simply no explanation of how I survived without God’s divine saving hand. I am convinced that I landed in Jesus’ arms. And if I did have any internal life-threatening injuries, I believe He reached down and healed those on the spot. There is simply no other explanation.
The Injuries
I ended up with compression fractures in my thoracic spine, two herniated discs in my neck, my right forearm (radius and ulna both) broke, a concussion, a broken nose and my face was sliced open. All things considered though, the injuries could have been a lot worse.
I had seen numerous doctors following the accident to help address all the pain I was now in. A couple months after the accident we were told by multiple doctors that neck surgery was likely inevitable to fix the herniated discs.
In April, 6 months after the accident, my husband and I were contemplating neck surgery and my right arm re-broke along with the metal plates used on my radius. Surgery had to be redone and bigger, stronger plates inserted.
Two weeks later as I waited with a broken arm for my second round of surgeries, I had a familiar sharp burning pain in my right leg and thigh. Another Doppler of my leg showed that sure enough, I had more clots, for the third time in under a year.
At this point, I remember just laughing upon hearing that news. It was either laugh or cry as I sat there in disbelief. I struggled questioning, “really Lord? Seriously? What are You doing and where are You?” I felt like there was no end in sight. I sat there trying to come to terms with potential neck surgery at 29 years old, a re-broken arm and another blood clot – all within the first 8 months of our marriage. I didn’t understand any of it, but again, He knew what He was doing. He knew exactly how He was going to work and weave and carry me through a horrific situation.
The second surgery on my arm in June of 2014 left me in a mandatory waiting period for my neck. Then I was placed back on a blood thinner for another 6 months for the new clots. The neurosurgeon would not perform neck surgery until after the blood thinners were complete and a Doppler showed no clots.
I had no choice but to wait it out and trust in Him. I had been through numerous rounds of physical therapy and after the 6 months of blood thinners the surgeon thought neck surgery was no longer necessary at that time. Here is an example of how God can work and weave an awful situation into good. He made me wait it out and I no longer needed neck surgery.
It has been a long road and I’m still dealing with chronic pain from the accident. Perhaps I always will. But I share all the details with you because through it all He has shown me who He is. My faith is stronger.
I thought I had a strong faith before the accident but I know Him better than I did before. And for that reason I can’t say I wish it had never happened. If that’s what it took, then so be it.
The After: A Daily Battle Living In Chronic Pain and God's Presence Like I've Never Known Before
My journey of getting to know Him better, really know Him and understanding who Jesus is and why we need Him, wasn’t an ah-ha moment for me. It wasn’t like “bam” I was in the accident, living in chronic pain, and then a light switched and “I got it.” Perhaps He works through some people that way, but for me, He didn’t.
Coming to terms with surviving that day absolutely left me in awe. I knew He saved my life and I shouldn’t have survived. That fact alone left me in amazement of who He is and what He is capable of but it didn’t end there.
Throughout my ongoing recovery, He has taken my life and slowed it right down. I have not able to work and I had no idea if I would need surgery or if there was a “fix” for all the pain I was in.
The only thing I knew I could be sure of, when everything around me was uncertain, was His Word. It was the only thing I could be certain of. So I did the only thing I could think to do – I dug into His Word.
His Word, the living, active Word of God, was the only constant and truth I knew I could hold on to. I’ve heard people talk about “clinging to his Word” and I’ve now lived that and experienced it. I have experienced the peace that surpasses all understanding. And it’s completely available to anyone who seeks Him.
As hard as living and dealing with chronic pain is, I know who He is and I’ve had a peace through it all that I cannot describe. A peace that does not make sense if I try to leave Him out of it.
Have you ever experienced something that you struggled through but knew He was right beside you? Maybe He lined up a bunch of things in your life or certain circumstances and you could look back and see His hand through it. For me, I see His hand working and weaving through circumstances that ended up pulling me closer to Him and showing me who Jesus is.
Here is what He wove together:
Shortly after the accident, the book, the Naked Gospel, was recommended to me. It came at a time when I didn’t really know Him, not in a personal way that I do now.
The book’s main theme is “Jesus plus nothing” and through reading it I realized to be “right” with God, I do not need to do anything. I am forgiven. Christ’s atoning work on the cross makes me “right” with Him every day.
At this same time, I also watched a series on Eschatology. Eschatology is the study of last things. It was a topic that used to scare me. I had seen Left Behind and I remember walking into a room and if my twin sister, Sara, was missing, my first thought would be “oh no, He took her and left me!.” It might sound silly but it scared me.
But after watching this Eschatology series, God has graciously replaced all of the fear with His peace. And it’s a topic that excites me. No longer does it scare me.
Between watching the Eschatology series, I picked up a book called “Heaven” by Randy Alcorn. This was a book a friend had given me years prior. And now I felt lead to read it (I had a lot of time and I read everything I could). Heaven is about the New Heavens and the New Earth talked about in Scripture in Revelation 21 & 22.
Thirdly, at this same time, I also went back to the Bible study I was in prior to the accident. To my surprise, guess what we were studying? The New Heavens and the New Earth when Christ returns through a book called “Surprised by Hope“.
So here I was, learning about how He is going to make all things new, He will come back, and we will rise at the promised resurrection – learning about it from three completely different sources at the exact same time that I had nothing to do with. God got my attention. I was listening.
God had graciously taken my perspective off of my physical pain, and shifted it to Him, His Son Jesus who died for me, and the hope we all have in the promised resurrection.
Prior to the accident, I believed in Him but it didn’t do anything to me. I felt like I was missing something. When I thought about Jesus and the cross, it was more of a passing thought, maybe a shrug like “yeah I believe that.” But that was it. It didn’t move me like I knew it should or could.
But in the aftermath that followed and this entire journey He has carried me through, I can see Him making Himself known to me.
Jesus replaced our need to follow all these rules of the Old Testament (Paul talks about this in Romans and how the Ten Commandments show our need for a savior and how we can’t keep the law, keep all the rules – the rules I would put on myself without realizing it).
I see now, I was in many ways, always striving to be “better”, to be “right,” to be “accepted.” But I am already accepted by Him because Christ died for me. I began to truly have an identity in Christ.
We are “right with God” because Jesus died for us! I finally began to get it. I knew I heard these things before but I didn’t really understand it personally. I do now. And it is absolutely freeing.
God created each of us – and back in the Old Testament with the Ten Commandments and the laws the Israelites tried to keep –it wasn’t possible. They couldn’t do it. They kept failing. And the Old Testament sacrifices – they had to atone for their own sins by sacrifices and it was a continuous process. Nobody could keep all the laws – it could not be done on their own.
But Jesus put an end to it all. He was the final sacrifice. He says on the cross “It is finished” in John 19:30 and I love that! It is finished! It is. We don’t have to do anything but believe in Him. We are forgiven and He has set us free from having to work our way to Him.
So the accident, daily dealing with chronic pain, and the aftermath that has followed, has been divinely woven together by His presence, His truth, and His peace. My life He has slowed right down, and in doing so, He met me in ways I would never trade. And that is solely His grace. His mercy. And His steadfast love.
I share the details of that day and the injuries that followed to show how His grace, His mercy, and His divine saving hand can change everything.
If are also living with and dealing with chronic pain, may you be encouraged to seek Him out. Dive into His Word. Get to know Him in a deeper way than you do right now. He sees you exactly where you are and His plan is perfect. In all the uncertainties a life of chronic pain can bring, His Word remains certain. Hope starts with Him and His Word.
“For I know the plans I have for you declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. “I will be found by you.” declares the Lord.” Jeremiah 29:11-14
To learn more, you can watch my Facebook live interview with Pastor Kaiser where we discuss living in chronic pain and how you can find hope through Christ in the most difficult situations you face. We also dive into the freeing transformation that a Christ-centered identity and self-worth can have in your life and relationships.
This is an incredible story of faith and strength. I look forward to new posts Lisa.
Thank you so much Diana!
Thanks for sharing your story, Lisa. It is a testament of God’s faithfulness. I hear you on getting to know Him better through trial. It is when He shines most, no? Blessings…
Yes, His faithfulness!! When He shines most – absolutely. Thank you my friend <3
You are an amazing and inspirational wife, mom, and niece! You are certainly an inspiration and I am Blessed to call you family ❤️
Thank you so much Aunt Shirley, and I feel the same, absolutely blessed to be part of your family. Much love to you and Uncle Tom!
So powerful! Loved it 🙂
Thank you!! 🙂
Thank you Lisa for sharing your journey through and with struggles to peace snd freedom and joy in Jesus God. I was moved to tears at the description of your horrific accident and then to tears of joy in your revelations about God’s sovereignty right here right now ALWAYS. I myself have daily maintenance I do for for chronic neck pinched nerve pain AND your story helps me reflect on my own journey and inspires me – with hope – to seek the ultimate healing in having a personal relationship with the Divine.
Proverbs 13:12 KJV
[12] Hope deferred maketh the heart sick: but when the desire cometh, it is a tree of life.
Thank you Aunt Michelle. You have been such an inspiration to me! Our journeys are so similar and may His name be praised and lifted high. And I love how you put that – “a personal relationship with the Divine.” Beautiful. Continued prayers for you and your healing and journey. Love you!
This is no doubt a story of miracles, and divine intervention. God is present! His Word is alive and transforming.
Thank you for sharing your encouraging journey. Let’s all be encouraged about what God can do! Well done Lisa.
His Word is alive and transforming – yes yes yes! Thank you for all of your prayers and encouragement throughout this entire journey <3 love you!
Lisa, I can hear your beautiful voice of conviction and total Love for our Savior, Jesus Christ in your story! Thank you for sharing this experience and proclaiming God’s Word! May God continue to Bless you and your family!!❤
Thank you Aunt Kathy, much love to you!
Hi Lisa. This blog, which I just read is so powerful. I am so happy and proud of you in knowing what you have been through all these years. The words you speak of God are so true, powerful. He is our good and gracious God. He has truly blessed you and I am sure lead you further in your lifes work to tell of his wonder ways and works. May God continue to bless you and your family Lisa.
Thank you so much Janet. I have loved getting to know you throughout this entire journey. I love what you said – He is our good and gracious God. Yes He is! May He bless you and your family as well.
This is such a beautiful story, Lis. And you’ve been an encouragement to me through my season of suffering. May God bless you and continue to do beautiful things through you.
Thank you so much Rach. And you have been to me as well! I love our faith talks <3 Love you!