“When our soul has been cast down, has never an invisible voice whispered, ‘There is lifting up’? Have not gales and breezes of sweet and healing thought been wafted over us, as if an angel had shaken from his wings the odors of paradise?” ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe
When Marsha recently wheeled me into the emergency room at Providence Hospital in Everett I was experiencing the worst pain of my life without a rational thought in my head. The kidney stone that had become lodged in my ureter was sending shock waves through my body that felt like a serrated screwdriver being twisting into my left side. It was as if I’d been condemned to some kind of medieval torture chamber. It had been days since I’d slept or eaten and I seriously wondered if I would survive the event.
The emergency room was a crowded place and it was clear it would take some time before I’d see a doctor. Marsha wheeled me over to the far end of the waiting room. A few minutes later we were joined by a young couple and their toddler who was himself in great distress, so much so that for a time I found myself distracted from my own misery.
His wailing curdled my blood. I could hardly imagine what kind of pain he was in. The scene was so heartbreaking.
- He so young little,
- so vulnerable,
- so innocent.
It was one thing for me, an old man, to be in such pain but not this little one.
Then something extraordinary happened. His mother pulled him into her arms and gently rocked him back and forth while she rubbed his back, whispering something into his ear. Soon this tormented little guy stopped crying and fell into a quiet repose while clinging to his mother.
I’d never seen anything like it. It seemed miraculous.
Marsha throughout the night had been rendering a similar kind of treatment to me. She gently rubbed my feet and hands when I was in the worst of my pain which seem to come in 15-minute intervals. Her touch was somehow able to settle my body where I could could catch my breath before the next wave.
She could do for me what drugs couldn’t.
The little guy I encountered in the waiting room and I were experiencing the same kind of miraculous power which has a kind of dominion over pain itself.
The power of unconditional love.
Pain overwhelms the senses and torments the soul. It’s the great reminder that we are all humans living in a temporal world, on the road to our own demise. My own pain made mincemeat of my sense of pride, strength and power, and brought me to my knees in humble submission.
The truth is in the times of our greatest pain we’re unceremoniously returned to a childlike state where all we want is our mommy and daddy to protect us, hold us and reassure us that everything will be okay.
My own recent descent into pain, as awful as it was, occasioned an experience I shall always cherish and forever remember. The miracle I witnessed in the emergency room between that young boy and his mother, and what I experienced in the tender mercies administered to me by my own wife, were nothing short of divine intervention.
I never truly understood the healing power of love. Sure, I understood the poetry and emotional content of those words but I can’t rightly say I ever experienced the powerful, practical potency of love as — medicine.
The great doctor Karl Menninger said, “Love cures people, both the ones who give it and the ones who receive it.” and “Love is a medicine for the sickness of the world; a prescription often given, too rarely taken.”
Just a thought…
Pat
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