The end of hope of having a sustainable career. Incapacitated at home. Many days were spent writhing in excruciating burning pain, inflammation, infection and mental numbness due to painkillers. (2007)
3For my days vanish like smoke;
my bones burn like glowing embers.
4My heart is blighted and withered like grass;
I forget to eat my food.
5In my distress I groan aloud
and am reduced to skin and bones.
6I am like a desert owl,
like an owl among the ruins.
7I lie awake; I have become
like a bird alone on a roof.
8All day long my enemies taunt me;
those who rail against me use my name as a curse.
9For I eat ashes as my food
and mingle my drink with tears
10because of your great wrath,
for you have taken me up and thrown me aside.
11My days are like the evening shadow;
I wither away like grass.
Psalm 102, NIV
Forced to even quit teaching. I was denied even the opportunity to help kids. What is life? It’s not about breathing or having a heartbeat. I couldn’t express myself in anyway, I felt nothing but pain and isolation. All that I once had – an athletic body, mental intelligence, a cheerful disposition, and many friends – were just a memory. And even these memories were fragmented due to the drugs and pains. If being normal was heaven, it didn’t matter, because I forgotten what heaven was supposed to be like. The atheist argument that either God doesn’t exist, or He isn’t as good as the Bible says He was like a thorn in my mind. The argument, even though logically I had reconciled it easily, never had as much resonance as now. It certainly looks like God wanted me to suffer. It looked like I was under wrath. If I were blameless, why am I suffering so much, and see many of my old Christian “brothers” scatter? Why did they not gather around me and support me? Why did they assume that I wasn’t doing things right? Either I wasn’t praying enough, didn’t have faith enough, didn’t (couldn’t) go to church enough or didn’t meet up enough believers enough. Hard to meet people when you are massively afflicted.
letters to a modern-day Job 