Let us pray for hidden invisible suffering

 Let us pray today especially for all those who suffer in hidden, secret ways that are not obvious or noticed. Let us pray that they are seem, recognised, heard, helped, blessed; that the Lord will fill them with the peace and strength to get through ever dire moment.

Here is a poem I wrote to express the hidden differences I experience.

I choose to survive

While you are getting up and going to work

Me, I am in agony and paralysed.

While you are driving around in your car,

Me, I am struggling to get my toes to move.

While you are wondering which delicious coffee and pastry to try next,

Me, I am struggling to figure what is safe to eat on my sugar free, dairy free, gluten free, wheat free, hydrolysed fat free, alcohol free diet.

While you are enjoying a pint or a glass of wine or a gin  and tonic or an infinite number of  cocktails,

Me, I am struggling to work out if it is safe to drink tap water or bottled water.

While you are going shopping for clothes and enjoying the choice of trying on the latest fashion,

Me, I am struggling to find any clothes I can wear at all that will not hurt me.

While you are splashing on your perfume and enjoying the delights of skin and hair products,

Me, I am struggling to find a soap I can use just to wash with at all.

While you are laughing, chatting, enjoying  the ordinary social banter of life,

Me, I am tormented and deteriorated to a spasming jelly by any voice at all that floats across my space, living in total isolation from contact with ordinary people.  

While you are going to meetings, spouting opinions, listening to information,

Me, I am unable to move or think or connect in anyway with normality.

While you are relaxing, having fun, enjoying a holiday or a weekend break,

Me, I am in agony, unable to go anywhere or do anything or have a break from the sheer physical

slog of coping with a body in so much pain that it cannot be touched, rest or get comfortable. 

While you are enjoying all the wonderful myriad social family occasions that come along,

Me, I am the empty gap no longer laid at the table.

While you are unwinding reading a newspaper or the latest novel,

Me, I am staring into space, trying to sit upright and avoid becoming paralysed, unable to focus with fuzzy eyes and fogged blank mind.

While you, with your health and your options and your opportunities are wondering what to do and feeling sorry for yourself,

Me, I have no choices, every connection to normality broken, unable to choose anything except despair or survive.

You have a wealth of opportunity every day, just being well,

Me, I choose to survive, but it gets harder every day.

Comment:

Just trying to highlight the difference in our lives and the choices most people have but may be unaware how lucky they are.