These last two weeks have allowed me to ponder the damage that life brings to each of us. In your life and in mine, we encounter pain that comes at varying degrees and affects varying parts of who we are.
A physical pain can cause us to simply say, “Hey, watch it!” or it can cause so much trauma that it paralyzes a section of the body for life.
I believe that we also suffer in varying degrees of pain in emotional and spiritual areas. For instance, a person can do or say something that hurts our feelings a little or they can damage our spirit so deeply that we experience an incurable paralysis deep in the mind and heart. The pain that a person suffers following deep emotional trauma requires an emotional wheelchair. The emotional wheelchair is not a bad thing, instead, it is a tool that gives him or her the ability to live again. Just as someone who spends life in a physical wheelchair, but learns to smile, play, and enjoy life, but is never again able to walk on his or her own, the emotional wheel chair is always attached to the emotions.
In many cases emotional paralysis affects a person from the insecurity down and no matter how hard that person works to allow their trust to walk again, they are never without the tools that they have learned to use in order to compensate for the genuine, wheelchair-free trust that he or she once was able to experience.
Paul told us that he suffered from something that God refused to take away. I believe he neglected to tell us exactly what that was for the simple reason that the details are irrelevant. Whether you and I are attacked physically, spiritually, or emotionally, there will always be varying degrees of trauma. But, in each case we are able to adapt to the tools required in order to begin living again, though living again may require a life spent in an emotional wheelchair.
