I know that feeling…

Recently I’ve been reading an inspirational book about a young girl with an incurable disease. The story despite being based on real life, this girl, Annabel, went through a miracle of complete healing.

As someone who suffered a severe medical illness, being in and out of hospital from a young age, I could relate to many things that Annabel went through in her battle against her disease. Of course, there were many differences between my illness and hers; for instance, Annabel fought against a stomach problem where her stomach would block nutrients coming inside her body. My illness on the other hand was a metabolic disorder affecting blood glucose levels, however my illness did affect my swallowing and resulted in me needing to have a PEG tube (or gastrostomy button) inserted, like Annabel did. Despite the feeling of deep sympathy that I had for her dealing with this pain and trials, to read through the pages with familiar words popping up such as gastrostomy button, dystonia, etc. I felt a small bond with Annabel as we both had similar experiences.  

I feel that with many life experiences, maybe especially with health episodes, when we meet or hear about someone who has gone through what we have gone through, or similar to, we feel a bond. For myself, knowing that someone has felt what I’ve experienced, and that I can feel what they’ve experienced makes me feel reassured and not alone. We as humans go through so many struggles, and oh my goodness it feels comforting when you have someone in your corner who actually understands what it feels like.

Another thing I was reading on Easter Saturday was an article about the suffering of Jesus. The title of this article was “No One Has Suffered More than Jesus”. To be honest when I saw the title I kind of doubted the truth of the headline, as I felt that Jesus couldn’t have experienced every single health issue, like cancer, brain damage, endometriosis, etc, in his 33 years on earth. However, I thought I’d give the article a read anyway.

In this short but thoughtful article I gained more insight into the physical, mental and emotional state of Jesus. To summarise the article (I’m going to butcher it, I’m sorry), it describes how the human body and mind is imperfect because of original sin. As a result of this, our bodies are more weakened. Jesus’ body is perfect, his mind is perfect, basically everything is perfect; and he has complete awareness and ownership of what goes on. So to experience hurt, pain and everything in between would feel more intense to Jesus. I guess when thinking about this concept of different pain awareness, it reminded me of when I get medical Botox every 10 weeks to reduce my facial dystonia. I have noticed that when I get the Botox injections done in the mornings rather than the afternoons, the pain feels more acute and is more painful to bear. Personally, I have observed that my body is more sensitive to pain as it is relaxed and more at ease in earlier hours of the day.

Going back to Jesus; One big thing that He did by coming to earth was to completely unite himself to us in everything other than sin. Despite it being hard to comprehend the will and sufferings of Jesus, it gives me comfort, reassurance, and hope through my sufferings that I am not alone.