New pain management program: Get Closer to Jesus

Go back…go back!
After being in the cave for so long, returning to a “normal” life presents challenges. I was working on my master’s degree in rehabilitation counseling when the trigeminal neuralgia became unbearable. When I was more than half-way into the program, my pain level peaked, and I could not concentrate.

I might have seen this coming if I had listened to my doctor’s advice. They were encouraging me to take a semester off. But I did not want to do that. Each course was offered on only once a year, and I thought that the degree was taking long enough. After all, I was not getting any younger. I was planning to start in a new field and would be making even less than I did as a teacher. I was determined to get back on the ladder of success. My cohort graduated without me, but I was too busy to give it much thought. I was managing my pain.

I had a pain management program designed specifically for me. It was called Get Closer to Jesus, and it is the best program I have encountered. After I was healed, I felt God leading me back to finish things that were left undone. After months of enjoying life without pain, I registered for class. It proved to be one of the most difficult things I have encountered, from registration to the final. The course was not difficult, but the anxiety was tremendous. I was returning to the very thing that had spurred my exhaustion and the escalation of pain. My friends were gone.

I had been in a cohort where people were friends with one another, but not with me. My best friend from my cohort had died without warning just a few months before class started. Now I was sitting a room where I had never been without her. Tears threatened me every moment, but with God's help, I completed the class.

Finally it was time to take that last class. I did an independent study, which relieves the anxiety about being in school without my friends, especially Susie. The university has a new on-line system, and it has seemed impossible to understand. Yet I have finished registration, another way realizing that with God all things are possible. The angst attached to the process is behind me. So is the last class. I am one step farther from the cave. Praise God! Praise God!