Needles

Needles

Psalm 116:7 – Be at rest once more, O my soul, the lord has been good to you.

I Feel like I start every piece with an announcement regarding something I absolutely love, or absolutely hate. It works for my illustrations so here we go. I absolutely hate needles. Genuinely and truly, from then bottom of my heart. I can not stand them. I have been known to cry before or during and after an injection. I won’t diagnose myself with a phobia, but it cannot be far off. I have been this way since I was very little.

Before you message me with your hints, tips, and tricks for how to deal with needles/injections I can guarantee you I’ve heard them all. Asking for a countdown, closing your eyes, humming, inhaling, exhaling, holding my breath, visualising, I have heard it all. But the one piece of advice that has followed me relentlessly from my earliest jabs as a child, to my most recent Covid jabs, has been this… ‘relax, calm down, it hurts more if you tense’. I have heard this more times than I can articulate. I will have to be honest with you, it is the most infuriating, but the most effective advice. If I wake up knowing that I have an injection that day, and I walk around tense, out of breath, anxious, I will be physically tensing by the time I get to the place where I’m supposed to have the injection. And I can tell you from experience when I have relaxed and embraced the needle, reminded myself that I’ve never died from an injection before, at the very worst it hurts for two seconds and then it doesn’t, the pain of the injection hurt so much less. It is the most infuriating and the most effective method of dealing with something that I fear so deeply.

I think that last sentence may give away what I’m going to try and have a stab at unpacking today. But I want to specifically address a certain group of people, and if this doesn’t apply to you, please don’t stop reading, read on, and encourage someone else. Today I want to talk to people that are scared. Not just scared of specific things but are scared constantly. People that live with this underlying, nagging, relentless fear that sometimes they can’t explain, but it remains there, steady, and unwavering. I want to talk to you today. It may not be the case that there is a specific thing you’re afraid of, I don’t encounter needles every day, so I don’t have to fear them every day. But there are things that do scare me, every day. And because of that, sometimes I can walk around tense. As if I’m bracing myself for an accident. You may not know where it comes from, you may not know what you’re scared of, you may not know how you got here. But you walk around tense, the fear that something bad is around the corner is crippling. And you cannot shake it. I’m talking to you today.

Maybe this fear comes from the fact that you have been through a lot. You can’t seem to catch a break, you feel like bad things are seeking you out, and God is letting them. You are so used to things going wrong, that you don’t hope, you welcome the good, but you don’t expect it. You’ve tried to numb yourself to the bad. And you get frustrated with yourself because you feel every hit, so deeply, every single time. It’s caused you to walk around bracing for impact. There’s every chance that you are reading this and it’s the complete opposite, you are in a season where your life is so good that you don’t trust it. It seems, it looks, it feels, it must be far too good to be true. You don’t trust the good because you believe that good things in this life are transactional, you must do something to get the good. You believe bad is inevitable but good is transactional. You cannot believe how blessed you are, your life isn’t perfect by any means, but you are so unspeakably grateful for where you are in your life right now. So again, just like with the first group of people I described, you are bracing. You walk around tense, waiting, not being able to enjoy the good, because you believe that something bad is coming to even the score. Good or bad, up, or down, the result is the same. Walking through life bracing for the bad, not being able to enjoy the good, and been floored by everything that’s not good.

The only problem with tensing, just like when I spoke about my injection, tensing only makes the pain worse. There is actually a scientific reason for this, and the biologist in me probably resonated with this fact hence why I believe it works. When you tense your muscles during an injection your muscles tighten and create resistance against the needle. That in turn usually forces the administer of the needle to push harder. The Force required for the needle to breach the hardened muscle increases and so not only causes more pain during injection administration, but also can cause bruising swelling and discomfort even after the injection has been administered. So knowing this, I had no choice but to agree that it pays to relax your arm. Now, that’s all easy in theory, but what gets me through? What in that moment convinces me to relax my arm? What helps me to reduce the crippling anxiety I experience in the hours leading up to my injection? I have to tell myself, that no injection I have ever had, has done anything other than benefit me. The moments of pain, even feeling poorly the next day, all contribute to the strengthening of my Immune system. Whether it was to put me under general anaesthetic? Numb me at the dentist? Or vaccinate me against a disease. The benefits of the injection push me to take the pain well. I still get anxious during the day, but it is anxious moments I can remind myself it will be over in seconds and it’s for my good.

The only way to bring this home is to talk about our scripture today. We go to a psalm. Believed to have been written by David. Psalm 116:7 ‘Be at rest once more oh my soul, for the Lord has been good to you’ This scripture absolutely blows my mind. The peace that it brings me is hard to articulate. If you don’t know about David he was a man that knew pain. He was a man that knew fear. He knew betrayal, he knew loss, he knew heartache, I can confidently say there are only a handful of individuals in the Bible I believe went through more trials than King David. But David also knew incredible joy. He knew great Triumph. Some biblical scholars argue that he is the most significant biblical character after Jesus. The only man in the entire Bible to be described as an individual after the heart of God himself. David knew highs, and David knew lows. In one of his low moments, when he was tempted to panic, when he was tempted to quit, when he was tempted to succumb to the fear, he told his soul to rest. He spoke to his body, he spoke to his mind, he spoke to his emotions, he spoke to his will. He told them all to rest. Why? Because he remembered that the Lord had been good to him. He knew that what he was walking through would not last, he knew that God was kind enough to use the pain to strengthen him, to purify him, to deepen his trust in the Lord. He knew that this was not the end, he understood that life has its ups and has its downs, he told his soul to rest because he understands the track record of the God that he serves. He remembered that he had survived every one of his bad days, none of his trials ever took him out. He was able to relax through life because even though there was pain, God had never not bought good out of it.

And I believe it speaks directly to the two groups of people that I just described. Whether you are in a place of turmoil or a place of euphoria. If you are walking around afraid and tense and worried about what is round the corner. If you’re feeling like you deserve bad things? Or if you’re feeling that you haven’t had enough bad in your life so it must be coming. Take a deep breath and tell your soul to rest. Look back at the track record of your God. Even in the times when you feel like he has let you down, even in the times when you feel like the pain was unnecessary, Our God is kind enough to promise that he will bring good from it. I can guarantee even if you have had the worst life imaginable, you can recall 10 occasions that God has been good to you, that good has happened, if you need evidence to prove the goodness of God, head to Psalm 23, that Psalm will tell you that the goodness of God is literally chasing you down and will be for the rest of your life, stop bracing for the bad. Be at rest, remember that the Lord has been good to you. In those moments you can remind yourself this pain won’t last forever, God will turn it for my Good. I will be stronger after this, my God is good. My God has been and will continue to be good to me. Be at rest once more, oh my soul. Unfortunately, it’s not a quick fix, it takes practice. You can tell that by David saying ‘once more.’ He had definitely told his soul to rest before. And he was telling it to again. Don’t give up, keep remembering how God never left you, and allow that to help your soul to rest.

God is on your side, good, bad, up or down. The God of heaven has promised good to you. That doesn’t mean that life will always feel good, but it does mean that good can come out of every situation. Do not let the enemy rob you of days you can be enjoying through fear that they won’t last. Do not let the enemy rob you of hope that things can’t get better. If you woke up today, it means things can get better. Believe God. Tell your soul to rest.

We love you,

agape x