So, for this post I want to steal the post a friend. She ran track in college and was roommates with a girl who I served with in New York.

"I realized today that pain is a relative term when I smacked my own face with my hairbrush. I won’t even try to explain how this took place. Let it be known that I am hazardous to my own health and occasionally the health of the nation. Or at least my apartment. I should be required by law to come with a warning label. The point is that I ended up with a fat lip and enough blood to make me woozy. It hurt a little, but it wasn’t what I would really call painful. At least not compared to the hip/I. T. band injury that is currently plaguing my life. The injury itself is less painful than the pain of being unable to run. Still greater is the pain of feeling out of shape and being left behind while the team travels around the country to race. It’s all relative. I’d rather smack my face with a brush twelve times a day for the rest of my life than miss another race. But fortunately we can’t pick and choose pain. Or else I would always choose that sick stomach pain that comes after eating a pint of ice cream. Because that is always a worth-it kind of hurt.
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The worst kind of pain is the type that you can’t just stick some ice or a band-aid on. Like this morning when our friend got the call that her grandma had passed away. When it comes to pain like that we use euphemisms like “grief “or “sorrow”. But dumb it down and it’s all just pain. Raw, yawning, gaping, open-wound kind of pain. Tears like that sting a whole lot worse than any fat lip.

But whether it’s a leg injury, a death, or just a stupid fat lip, it’s nice to know that there isn’t any kind of pain that we have to bear alone, because there isn’t any pain that hasn’t been felt before by a loving Savior. I know we don’t usually do serious topics, because rarely can a couple of Disney-channel watching, cereal eating, wanna-be 12 year olds be serious, but in a world of unavoidable hurt it is important to remember the one we can always rely on. Because although pain is relative, God isn’t. He is constant. I am grateful for a loving and attentive Father in Heaven, and His perfect son Jesus Christ. I’m grateful for prayer, for the scriptures, and for a Mere who is a pretty dang good example to me because she understands all this and is pulling through like a champ.

In addition to heavenly help there are usually friends and family in your corner when things get bumpy. In that back-stretch of the track where the crowds aren’t cheering and the race starts to hurt, there are always those few that you can count on to be there pulling for you. This is just a little shout out to those still there in my corner. And to you, Mere, I’d take a fat lip for you any day, I’m on your backstretch, and you are running one heck of a race."

That call hasn't come, but it seems to be pending. Opa has come through open heart surgery twice like a champ, but now this stroke just keeps complicating his life with seizures and infection. Modern medicine has added years of time with him, but I'm not sure how much longer we'll be blessed with him in our lives. It's hard to be accepting of something you do not want to happen. I am grateful for all the things mentioned here - for knowledge of the plan of our Father in Heaven, for a Savior who feels, understands, and can comfort that hurt. Also for everyone in that backstretch, and for the others running the race like champs.
Ik hou van je Opa