Relax into Fall – 06/09/06

Here’s an email from 2006 about phantom pain and being an amputee. I wrote this to my pastor after she preached a sermon with the above title….

Today is the day where I am being challenged to do that. My nerve endings are firing off like crazy. Take the sensation of your foot falling asleep, turn it up to 10, 20, 50, 100 or 1000 and experience that feeling off and on for hours in the foot that you no longer have because you are an amputee. That was my evening. I did not handle it well last night but I started to focus and breathe and pray and now I am doing better. I believe that there may be a lot of amputees who could be chronically depressed, drug attics, alcoholics, cutters or just plain mean because they cannot figure out a way to deal with phantom pain and sensation.
I asked Lewis why he’d want to deal with this for the rest of his life and he said, “Because I love you.” Wow. So today, I am working it out. I am praying, focusing, breathing, using visualization, you name it. God has given me the tools to deal with and sometimes defeat this thing. I praise him for that. And its amazing how much better I deal with it, when I relax…..