Jane Grayshon | A Harvest From Pain | My Summation notes
CLICK HERE: For the introduction of what I’m referring to as my “Tender Journey”, and why I’ve included a special page just to honor what the LORD has done and is doing in Jane’s life.
..
11.22.12 – Thursday – THANKSGIVING – Today I finished Jane Grayshon’s book, A Harvest From Pain. It has been greatly used in my own life because of my own illness. I reach again and again for her book for its reassuring words and the hope it offers. After reading and re-reading Jane’s book, I wanted a place where I could go again and again to re-read the portions which were especially meaningful to me.
To understand what Jane has gone through for over 30 years, watch this video.
My own pain began on October 11th, two days before my birthday. I began the book on November 6. That was almost one month (day #24) into my own painful journey. My pain was such that what I was suffering was like having a UTI (urinary track infection) but a UTI like none before. Actually I knew what it was. Its ugly name? Interstitial Cystitis (a/k/a/IC). IC has no cure. It is one of the most painful afflictions known to modern medicine. It is a condition that used to be rare, but now we understand it afflicts 1 out of 1oo people, mostly women, but men and, sadly even children, can suffer from it. It is a medical mystery, and due to the severe pain it carries one of the highest suicide rates. When it rages, (or as we call them “flares”) it’s like someone has a razor and a needle (both at the same time) and they are slashing/cutting/scraping and like there is a fire in your entire groin area, inside and out. There is a CONSTANT never ending sensation that you need to empty your bladder, but when you void, hardly anything happens. You’re left still feeling full, in constant pain, with that awful bladder pressure. Someone has labelled it “it’s like a Urinary Tract Infection (UTI) on steroids.
On or about the 24th day into my affliction with IC, I realized that it was not going away anytime soon. I was “managing it” the same way I had 15 years earlier, but this time with no improvements. I remembered had purchased Jane’s book years ago when I had gone through a similar trial, but God mercifully ended my pain and I put Jane’s book up on my shelf, happy to be “done with it”. This time, however, the affliction has lasted much longer and I found myself once again, reaching for Jane’s book. It has ministered to me greatly.
What you will read below are what touched me as highlights of Jane’s book, and/or my thoughts as I read. It is what I felt the Lord was saying to me through His servant, Jane. These notes may or may not apply to you, but they ministered to me greatly in my time of pain. It is pain that I still am in the midst of, but when and if my Lord decides to release me, I don’t ever want to forget this journey, and who knows but that someday, my posts might minister to someone else.
HIGHLIGHTS and my marginal notes from Jane’s Book, A Harvest From Pain | or my summary book report !
Page 9 – INTRODUCTION – 11.6 – Jane writes that her husband had left her a note on her desk which to her was almost “mysterious”, cryptic was the word she used. Psalm 11:71 reads: It was good for me to be afflicted so that I might learn your decrees. I am familiar with that passage and so immediately I have two thoughts, Satan is either being allowed by God to “afflict me” or Satan is lying to me. I am also thinking that I know everything God allows in my life is for my good, so what “lesson” is he teaching me through this ordeal? I am open. I am not angry at God. I am, however, waiting for the revelation of what God wants to say to me and to teach me. I can not say (at least at this point) that it’s good to be afflicted but I can say that I am open to learn his decrees. I am thankful that I am his child and he is teaching me his ways.
Page 10 – God brings some virtue out of suffering. Pain slashes. But harvesting is all about cutting and grinding down too, and that is what I feel inside my body. I want to escape that pain, but I don’t want to escape God becoming bigger in me. But I’m not ready to thank him for the pain, YET. The only one who really knows the depth of my suffering is my husband. I wish I could be totally silent about it, I know that God knows. Only God (and perhaps the prayers of his saints) can “raise me up”. The doctors are powerless to do it.
CHAPTER 1 – Barriers Broken
Pg. 16 – There is nothing to suggest that the pain, the inflammation, would suddenly be over.
Pg. 17 – I’m terrified of being a boring, moaning woman
Pg. 18 – I don’t ever want to be an unfeeling and cold woman when others are sharing their pain with me
CHAPTER 2 – Stone or Bread
Pg. 25 – I don’t want to burden my husband (or anyone) with what is my own problem
Pg. 25 – The realization that our recent exercise we had had been taking together daily (except for Sundays) was not only something we both enjoyed (and needed) but that it also served to strengthen the bonds between us. I didn’t want to lose that.
Pg. 31 – God always gives good things.
Pg. 32 – I have asked for freedom from pain but God has not done that for me. God is not like the obedient genie from the story of Aladdin’s lamp. I had to accept that prayer was not a case of rubbing a lamp and calling for whimsical gifts by magic.
Pg. 33 – It is not a “right” to be fit and able … It is a gift and a privilege
CHAPTER 3 – Heart Broken (Asking myself the hard questions)
Pg. 37 – Do you believe in the goodness of God?
Pg. 39 – The only peaceful course is to trust in His goodness
Pg. 39 – How do you pray when God seems not to care about how black life is?
Pg. 40 – Thank you Lord Jesus, for what you have given me, for what you have taken away from me, for what you have left me. (Thomas More)
Pg. 40 – Many of us think that others of us sail along spiritually without a hitch
Pg. 42 – It’s just so easy to slip into bitterness and stop thanking God for things!
Pg. 42 – A warning to women to, if possible, save even a tiny part of one ovary so that natural hormones can function normally. Without our ovaries, uterus, etc., we feel as if we’ve been sort of neutered.
Pg. 43 – Am I able to pray the whole Thomas More prayer?
Pg. 43 – Once I face up to things which hurt, they can actually become seeds: seeds for growth.
Pg. 44 – God is good, no matter what we feel. He is a loving Father. We can trust Him that He won’t give a stone when we ask for bread. Any Faithfulness of mine is part of God’s fruit. His harvest, born uot of a struggle through pain.
Pg. 44 – The only way I can pray Thomas More’s prayer is by remembering who God is. If He’s in charge of my life, then He’s in charge of every detail – including what happens at the hand of surgeons while I’m asleep. I have put myself into His hands.
Pg. 44 – I don’t want you to think I”m full of trust and courage … It’s His Harvest
Pg. 45 – In the end, when we ask God “Why?”, it’s my experience that we have the joy of actually meeting God Himself.
CHAPTER 4 – Living Bread
Pg. 48 – Like Jane, I thought I had been cured of this disease which was diagnosed back in the mid 90s
Pg. 49 – This affliction (disease) is relentlessness; it seems to just keep on and on with it’s apparently futile course. Surely if there had been lessons to learn, I had learned them by now.
Pg. 52 – Even in the midst of pain, the glow of God’s presence continues to flow through me.
Pg. 53 – Jane writes: In my mind I pictured first some young seedlings which had been growing quietly and hidden. The coverings which had protected them were being lifted off in order to make room for them to grow. They would become strong plants and burst forth into fruit. “They are the seeds which have been hidden within me since the start of my illness seven years ago. The fruit is the harvest which God will bring from pain.” …groaning was symbolic of my own groaning and cries against the pain that I had had to bear. But it was not without purpose. God’s plan, it seemed, was to reveal what was precious to all who chose to see them. That night I caught a glimpse of pain as part of a transformation into a jewel – a precious stone. It was similar to irritant gravel becoming a pearl in an oyster’s eye.
Pg. 54 – “Please don’t get tripped up being sorry that all this has happened. I am convinced that we mustn’t be disappointed in God for allowing suffering to go on and on.
Pg. 55 – However much my pain seemed out of control, He was in control. That was enough for me. We can believe in the goodness of God. … the One who visibly heals, …. One who also works more deeply in us. … a private miracle. I had met with the Lord, and He had graciously imparted a great gift. Not healing, as I would have chosen. His gift was of Himself. And that seemed to me an even greater miracle.
Pg. 56 – Jesus is living bread. He wants me to feed on Him every day. Too often I try to depend on yesterday’s bread – last year’s bread. I can become so discouraged, so bowed down by the pain itself, that I am lured back into believing that suffering is worthless. He transforms me into someone whom He can draw to Himself. Such acceptance has only been born from struggle.
CHAPTER 5 – Silence Broken
Pg. 60 … enjoying a good patch at the moment. (I love having those “patches of good” where there is little to no pain). It makes me so thankful, and reminds me how much I took perfect health for granted.
Pg. 61 …. Like Jane, I am sometimes reticent to talk about how I am.
Pg. 62 … Why should I always have to be the one who opens up? When I read this I became mindful that I share a lot about myself, but sometimes other people don’t. As the kids say “what’s up with that”?
Pg. 63 … “although I’m better at the moment, pelvic inflammatory disease is an ongoing condition.
Pg. 64 … crying silently and hoping that somebody will care enough to notice the little hints which show there’s something wrong … (that person is usually always my husband).
Pg. 65 … hidden pain [not] easily seen
Pg. 67 … you hide how you are from friends – everyone does
Pg. 68 … I … don’t want to parade what hurts. …everyone here, chatting contentedly, having a most wonderful evening.
Pg. 69 … appearing to copy can be pretense. It’s a mask if I say I’m fine just because I don’t like or don’t trust the person who asks me. But sometimes we make it difficult for others to come close. We feel we have to.
Pg. 70 … sometimes you appear to be coping so well. Perhaps it goes against you. Even when you’re really ill, somehow your face appears bright. After all, there must be times when you want to cry.
Pg. 71 … you mustn’t keep us at arm’s length because you feel you should cope.
Pg. 71 … it wouldn’t be fair to make myself an intolerable burden on others, because they do have their own problems.
CHAPTER 6 – Hard Stones (LORD GOD … Please rescue my heart from turning to stone
Pg. 74 … As I tidied up, I knew I was dragging one foot after another. I was stooping involuntarily because of the pain.
Pg. 75 … soon need her meal, keep battling on, keep hoping that the pain would ease / refusing to be flattened by pain
Pg. 76 … re: prayer….feel slightly less impotent in this passive position of illness which I loathed so much.
Pg. 79 … I have been made into a patient
Pg. 80 … the truth is that I could have screamed
Pg. 81 … alone in my anguish
Pg. 81 … Why does God not rescue me? He is allowing my suffering to continue
Pg. 81 … I am determined … to steel myself against self pity.
Pg. 82 … If only God would give … put an end to my enemies … the pain, the sickness, the loneliness of suffering
Pg. 82 … More than two months now of chronic pain
Pg. 83 … the assaults of pain which batter and bash me from all sides
Pg. 83 … the Psalm was not helping me in the way I wanted … I am still left with this pelvic infection to which I succumb
Pg. 83 … I began to feel rather cynical
Pg. 84 … The Psalm reads “One thing I asked of the Lord, this is what I seek; that I may well in the house of the Lord all the days of my life …” My conscience was pricked…I was asking Him for more than that: to be freed from pain. I was not single minded as my Lord desired. GUILT !
Pg. 85 … Pain is not your real enemy, despair is! Suffering is not my worst enemy. My enemies are those things which creep unseen into my soul an deed despair. Hating self-pity sows seeds for the growth of love.
Pg. 86 … re: symptoms and possible operations and/or more procedures: We watch and wait.
CHAPTER 7 – Seeds Within Pain
Pg. 87 … those close to me [who] suffered their own pain as a consequence of mine
Pg. 88 … taken up with the everyday slog of just getting through each day, pushing myself on toward a fuller recovery.
Pg. 89 … ‘THWARTED” (my work at the moment)
Pg. 89 … “My wife [Jane] has a chronic debilitating illness. She has to bear a certain amount of pain every day … it’s called pelvic inflammatory disease.
Pg. 91 … practical mundane chores
Pg. 91 … Was it selfish of him to be thinking of himself, when he was not the one to be bearing the physical pain? (in the margins … Normal feelings)
Pg. 92 … “Can God be so tantalizing as to let me glimpse my vocation [Stay With Me CD] and then thwart me from fulfilling it?”
Pg. 92 … That is to expect yourself to give more to God than you are able to give.
Pg. 93 … But to embrace the suffering which presented itself, and to give it to God, serving Him through it, was to embrace the fellowship of suffering for Christ.
Pg. 94 … source of tiredness (grocery shopping, daily daily chores/laundry/dishes/cooking, etc.
Pg. 99 … Sometimes it was pride which held me back. I preferred to be seen as a coping person. I deprived those people of the opportunity to show their care.
Pg. 99 … Pain is one’s own. It is only each individual who has somehow, to bear it. It was the coping, hour by hour through the ongoing daily slog of pain with which I felt daunted.
Pg. 100 .. From Janes’s conversation with Joni Erickson Tada (When people ask how I cope) How would my Lord have wanted me to answer? “Lord, how do You want me to cope, day by day? I determined to listen to Him.
CHAPTER 8 – Rocky Pathway
Pg. 103 – I felt I must force myself on, like a boat plowing a route through increasingly threatening ice t Antarctica. The only hope, was to keep on moving. To wallow in my misery would do no good. Others would become if I always complained to them. I could not bear the lonliness of that.
Pg. 104 – I had expected to improve a little each day, impatient to be better . . . I had to be careful of what others would think. Independence important to my psychological well-being. At least so I believed. I did not want to lead a boring life.
Pg. 105 (Re talking to doctors) – increasingly afraid of boring him, moaning drearily on each tie I saw him.
Pg. 106 – quenched by the waves of pain and discomfort in my abdomen.
Pg. 107 – I was encased in a different world: the private world of pain.
Pg. 108 – take the risk of new commitments ..
Pg. 110 – (Re talking to doctors) I did not want to leave him with a false impression of fitness.
Pg. 115 – (From a friends letter to Jane which included a poem) – Do not be distracted by flowers in the fields. Keep going steadily along My path. On My path you will find rest and joy … God was telling me that I would find joy. And the promise was for the joy, not by being released from the pain of my pathway, but right on it: “On My path you will find rest and joy.”
Pg. 116 – (From the same friends’s letter and poem) – In submission to me you will find freedom and joy. But how could I submit to him when he persistently withheld healing? How could that be freedom, when it wounded only like a trap?
Pg. 117 – “Show me Your rest, Lord. If I can’t have rest from the pain, show me rest within it. Not somewhere else, but right where I am. On my pathway, my rocky pathway, show me Your joy”.
Pg. 117 – DO YOU BELIEVE IN THE GOODNESS OF GOD? (Again these words fromchptr 3 & 4)
Pg. 117 – If you’re not going to take the pain away from me, please help me to accept it.
Pg. 118 – Help me to see whatever You give as bread and not stones. help me to feed on You Lord. And show me Your freedom even if pain goes on and on . . .
CHAPTER 9 – Whose Harvest
Pg. 120 – (Re: Jane’s husband) – He was so bound up with me in the day-to-day slog of my pain and limitations, he needed every bit of encouragement as I did that God’s hand was on us even through the pain. He dashed off to his study and I felt terribly alone.
Pg. 121 – (Jane shares her thoughts about a passage from Daniel) – The “fire” in which I found myself was not literally a furnace, but at times the pain had taken on an intensity which could only be described as being like a fire. … He had not saved me from my illness. the miracle had been different. Despite the intense heat of the furnace, they had not been consumed by the fire. I wanted God to be seen in me, too! … even though I still felt in a “furnace” of long-term pain.
Pg. 122 – “His miracle in me has been to rescue me not from it but within it – by being with me, in it – as He was with Shadrach and his friends.”
Pg. 123 – I wish I could share the same happy ending, but if I’m honest, I can’t say that God has protected us from being singed or from having any smell of fire upon us”.
Pg. 123 – (Re: putting sufferers who suffer in a “godly” way on a pedestal) hadn’t [she] put me on to a glorious pedestal? Whitewashing suffering into something pleasantly victorious?
Pg. 124 – … was writing a book some pathetic way of making something as futile as chronic pain seem worthwhile?
Pg. 125 – … his words held my attention … “I touch Christ when I see you .. You are the aroma of the very presence of Christ …” I am not the holy person [his] words suggested. Illuminated … shining. They were lovely words, and both reflected the description of Shadrach and his friends shining to God’s glory in their furnace. But they were written by people who had seen only one side of me. There was another side too, which as exactly the opposite.
Pg. 126 – plagued with the idea that my writing was merely a pitiful attempt to drag some worth out of my suffering. (my thoughts follow) Paul the Apostle wrote of his pain. Was he pathetic? Again the reminder, “Angela … Do you believe in the goodness of God?“. My marginal notes in Jane’s book read thus: When I read Jane’s book, A Harvest From Pain, it helped me identify my emotions and encouraged me that even if I never serve in music ministry and sing again, or help a client find a home again, I can still be used by God.
Pg. 127 – (Counsel from a friend of Janes) – “Of course, it’s Satan who makes false accusations. He wants you to get fed up about your pain because it’s his business to stop us from seeing God’s loving hand in our lives. It’s his subtle way of making us feel fed up with God. Whenever you feel daunted you can say God is with me” … and page 128 her friends comments continue … “You know perfectly well that … Satan is a liar. He’d do anything to stop glory being given to God, whether it’s through our writing or whatever anyone offers for God.”
Pg. 128 – (Jane’s realization) A part of me had accepted credit which had really belonged to God. Make me willing for You to be seen more, for me to point to You rather than to me. I do not shine. I am rotten inside. Yet You shine in me. Thank You that You do bring good things even from what seems so worthless, that You do bring glory to Yourself even if I try to steal that very glory from You.”
Pg. 129 – A Harvest … just a natural consequence of sowing seeds. It is the same with the seeds which are sown within my pain – everybody’s pain. If there is any fruit, that is nothing unusual. It is not an achievement for which I should be praised. It is merely a product of growth – my life in God. God is seen in all those who offer their suffering to him. All He asks is for me to look to Him within the pain. He does all the rest.
Pg. 130 – (regarding a man’s compliment) I frequently feel far from brave. The compliment was to my Lord, to the One who chooses to live and work in me, even me. He graciously heals me. hs goodness is imponderable. We become aware of others in their furnace of different pain. And when we allow God in with us, then we can be given the very encouragement for which we crave: that God is glorified because He is visible in us.
CHAPTER 10 – Temptation Hard Hearts
Pg. 133 – … the quality of compassion … had grown with much struggle from seeds of pain.
Pg. 138 – underneath you beg for someone to break through through your role-playing, to sit down beside you and weep with you. I too have hidden my own kind of pain. Everyone has pain. Please … look at my eyes and don’t listen to the words I say . . .
Pg. 139 – It’s hard to disclose our pain when others may not understand. To do so is to risk meeting a response which does not take time to understand and to care. It is to expose willingly the very hurt to be trampled on. It is easier to say nothing, to talk only about pain which is acceptable to others and not necessarily about where we really hurt.
Pg. 141 – (comments from a sufferer named Mark) “Everyone always tries to help, but they can’t understand, so their ‘answers’ are never right. Mark had closed himself off from any help. Mark had refused to let God into where he hurt, so there could never be any harvest.
Pg. 143 – I say that I want them to pray for me. Actually I want them to feel for me too. I get it wrong. I demand too much. I allow my suffering to impose on others more than they are able to bear. I am tempted … that their [pain] is not as bad as mine.
Pg. 144 – My own pain, however extreme only has any meaning in terms of His. If I am to come close to God, I must encounter pain (counter to the culture of our world) … He allows a gradual transformation. His yeast is at work: His Holy Spirit which suffuses me with His life, warming my coldness toward Him, lifting my heaviness. And now I see that the stone is not something hard that a hard God holds out to me. The stone is in me. And God is a vulnerable God. And I only ever glimpse God’s own pain.
Jane’s Epilogue – (Thankskgiving Day, 11.22.12)
Pg. 147 – the pale, pinched sensation which accompanies severe pain.
Pg. 148 – I’m asking God to help me to accept how I am and to keep accepting it rather than feel sorry for myself”
Pg. 149 – “And I’m thanking Him for keeping my spirits up over the past weeks, and begging Him please to keep them up now.”
Pg. 149 – It’s easy for me to see others’ ministry because I only see the harvest, while their everyday business and battles against pain remain hidden to me. God knows that pain is bad. He promises that it will soon end … In heaven will be the harvest from pain.
Pg. 150 – This morning I feel freed to a new sense of joy. It is a solemn joy. “Do you believe in the goodness of God” and knowing that no matter what, I do. It is neither my success nor my fruitfulness which are important in my life, but union with God. That is what he made me for. This morning I see that to come close to His heart is to encounter pain..my heart beating more closely to His own pulse.
Pg. 152 – Without the tearing down of twigs, there would be no building of nests.
“Thank you Jane, for I am part of your Harvest, which of course is really God’s Harvest, and my nest is many many miles away” . . .
I am so thankful today for “tender listeners”. There are people in this world who have gone before us and show us the way to become more tender.
I have not read Goodbye Pink Room yet, but have read the comments about it from Jane’s site. I have a soft spot in my heart for abused women. One of my sisters was brutally abused and is still paying a price to this day for it. Jane Grayshon is the author of nine books. I have just finished reading her book entitled “A Harvest From Pain”. I want to say that before experiencing deep pain of my own, I had no idea how to help those who deeply suffer. I reached for Jane’s book because I knew she “knew me” without knowing me. I imagine the same will hold true with this book The Pink Room.
If you are in pain Jane’s writings will help you see how pain can be a pathway to tenderness. A quote from Jane’s site: Hundreds of people have expressed astonishment, relief, gratitude: “At last, someone (Jane) has put into words what I have experienced, yet nobody had seemed to understand.” Not surprisingly A Pathway through Pain, now in several languages, has been described as a Christian classic.
WHERE THERE IS DARKNESS LET ME BRING YOUR LIGHT
.
Tender Journey | Related Posts
- WHY?
- October 11 Surprise
- Introduction | Why I’m chronicling this Journey for all the world to see
- What is Interstitial Cystitis a/k/a IC
- My Diet, Herbal & supplement protocols (comfort and management ) for IC sufferers
- How I Feel Now
- A Visit With Friends
- Comfort and Inspiration Log
- Thanksgiving Love and Tenderness
