A little taste of hell?

A little taste of hell...

1.I know I run the risk of trivializing what the agony of hell might be like, but just keep in mind that any suffering we go through on this earth is only minor, and carries with it the hope of it ENDING... while we are on this earth. It is disturbing to me that people like David Reagan would imagine up a teaching of hell being temporary, which is not according to what is revealed in Scripture, and in so doing denigrate the Holiness of God by saying our sins aren't bad enough to deserve an eternity of hell.

Even I feel that way sometimes in the middle of my suffering -- how could God...? But I am captive to his Word -- he has said it, and I cannot impose my own sense of morality upon God, who is the source of morality in the first place. David Reagan and others who teach this error have set themselves up in judgement over the God who has revealed himself in Scripture.

2. Since this contains my description of what a bad migraine is like for me, it may be TMI for some people. Be warned. I don't think it's so bad but hey, I'm a mom, a farm girl at heart, and have animals. So matter of fact about these things is OK with me at least in some or most contexts.

Migraine diary:

Saturday evening: I can feel or hear a rumbling in my ears, a tinnitus-like sound that reminds me of when semi trucks or people with loud subwoofers go by outside and cause your entire house to emit a sympathetic vibration. It goes on for hours. I try to go to sleep but find it hard to relax with that thrumming in my head. Gradually I feel my neck ligaments also getting more and more inflamed as well. My left nasal cavity feels plugged, always worse than the right side and feels like it is constantly draining, which surely can’t be helping my stomach feel much better.

Insides feel like everything I eat just sits there making me feel bloated and my stomach feels like I have constant acid indigestion, which causes me to feel nauseated. That particular problem has been going on several days.

Sunday: Wake up in the morning still feeling pressurized and tense everywhere, especially the deep muscles and ligaments along the spine. So I have a little caffeine hoping that will ease the tension before it becomes a headache.

On the ride to church, the tension becomes noticeably worse. I sit in weird positions, letting my head fall backward to try and relieve the tension in my neck. But by the time I get to church I can feel the first pain of a migraine behind my left eye. So I take one 50 mg tramadol before going into Sunday School and have a cup of coffee because the caffeine I took an hour ago still isn’t really helping. I also have a little cookie because maybe low blood sugar is part of it.

By the end of Sunday School my stomach is really nauseated from the cookie and the tramadol. The pain behind my eye has increased to about 5 on a scale of 1-10 in spite of the tramadol. I know that I can’t get upset at all, for that will instantly increase the pain. Silly me I didn’t think to bring any dramamine. So I basically hide during fellowship time in a room with a sofa. I dig out something round and hard (a cup) from a cupboard and place it in a certain position on the arm of the sofa, while I lie down with my body weight mostly pressing that cup into the deep tissues of my neck. This causes a cold burning sensation and makes my entire arm go numb on that side. However, as long as I keep up the pressure, the pain in my eye remains at bay.

I manage to doze off during the church service, but have to wake up periodically to readjust the cup and find a new pressure point, since it’s not just one spot in my neck that is tense.

By the end of the service I have to force myself to get up and go to the restroom. My body works extra hard to flush out the chemicals and extra fluid that seems to accumulate during these episodes, and I am usually having to go every half hour until this is over. I spend some time in there wondering if I should just make myself throw up and get it over with, and trying to comprehend the pain my head is experiencing. It’s probably crept up a notch or two to a 6 or 7 despite my best efforts. I decide against forcibly emptying my stomach, and wander over to the sound booth to tell my husband with no emotion (remember, emotion, both positive and negative, increases pain exponentially) “I don’t know how much longer I can stand this. Where are the keys.”

He says “OK, we’re just wrapping up” and hands me the keys. I stumble out to get my coat and shuffle slowly to the car. I start the car, then get out and get in the back seat, where husband’s laptop is lying in its case. I stand the laptop up on its edge, and lie down with the edge pressing into my neck. Especially the corner. Within ten minutes husband and daughter come out to drive home. Every bump on the road provides a mixture of relief and pain. The jolt would increase the pain but it also jolts the edge of the laptop into my neck so it is somewhat canceled out... for the time being at least. However it does nothing for my feeling of motion sickness. I was sure I would have to have them pull over so I could throw up on the side of the road... but I thankfully made it home. Garage door opened, I shuffle inside.

I stumbled into the nearest bathroom, right inside the house from the garage. Turn on shower full hot, dropped all my clothes on the floor and got in the shower. Turned water temp down from full hot to as hot as I could stand. Curled up on floor of shower, with tall gallon shampoo bottle top pressing into my neck. Laid there only moving to adjust where the water was hitting. I continued in my attempt to keep the pressure on my head by holding my breath and pushing. Every time I had to stop to catch my breath I had to do it very quickly and then return to holding breath and pushing, before the pressure in my head went down again, or the pain would ratchet up about four notches. This is exhausting work and if the migraine is severe, it can go on for hours.

Eventually sometimes I have had to give up on this method out of sheer exhaustion. Then I start to cry, which also makes the pain worse. I end up having someone drive me to the ER, and the ride is torture. The procedure they go through for treating migraines seems to be different every time I have gone there (about once a year maybe for a total of three times). First time they gave me demerol in the hip and some anti emetics. Wonderful stuff. Now they say they can't give demerol anymore because of its addictive properties. great.

Next time I was already exhausted from the pushing/pressurizing my head thing, and I was nearly hysterical trying to deal with the pain in the waiting room. Crying and nose running all over myself, the whole shebang. But I didn't care at that point. I do remember noticing my neighbor who I hadn't seen for a long time, was there with her son. Oh well! I couldn't think about the embarrassment much.. yup, the pain would've gotten worse.

They brought me into another room and the pain started to go away. Just like that. While I am thankful anytime the pain goes away, it is embarrassing to have it do so just before they start to actually HELP you. It's just like your car noise when you bring it in to the mechanic. This time they gave me dilaudid. Awful stuff, didn't work much at all except made me nauseated. They say it's 10x stronger but it doesn't work well for me.

The next time it wasn't so bad but I was going into a weekend and feeling like it'd been building for a long time and was about to explode into another major one, so this was somewhat more a preventative measure. But this time they said "oh we have to do an IV for fluids and give you toradol first and then if that doesn't work we can try morphine" -- it took them at least 45 minutes of actively trying to find a vein, and the migraine thankfully had again gone away mostly by then -- and then once they did find a vein that sort of worked occasionally, they couldn't put the fluid in very fast at all because the vein was so small. And the IV pump kept stopping. It was set at 200 ml per hour. Ridiculous. It would take 4.5 hours to get through the whole bag of lactated ringer's. After an hour and a half I was ready to climb the walls. Whoever came up with this idea never had a migraine! I haven't been back since because that rigamarole simply isn't worth the effort. I may as well stay home and try and fix it. Of course none of these complaining thoughts are allowed to go through my head at the time when I am in pain, at least nothing more than flitting through and forcing myself to forget them for the time being. They get dwelt on later, after it is over.

Back to Sunday after church, me under the hot water -- So I am curled up on the shower floor, and I needed someone to come bring me some baking soda water to end the fire in my stomach, but no one was responding to my calls. I couldn’t yell, or the pain would increase. So I was forced to wait... and not only that, I could not become impatient, nor despair, or have ANY emotional response to the situation, because that would also increase my pain.

Eventually husband came and asked if I needed anything, so I said “baking soda water” and he brought some. It was a little cold for my sour stomach but ok. I needed to settle my stomach before I could handle any more medication. So I drank some, and then threw up (the effort of which also increased my head pain). Well, at least the acid was neutralized. I drank a little more to be sure. Now that my stomach was at least not tormenting me anymore, the focus was turned again to the pain that felt like a rusty railroad spike was being shoved very slowly through my eye socket...and another up my nose on that side. Husband disappeared and the hot water ran out. I had to get out of the shower before it got too cold or all would be undone. But there was no towel. I called weakly a few more times, but no one answered. I shut off the water and tried again, but there was no answer.

So I got out, grabbed my coat off the floor and wrapped it around me to head up to my bedroom, soaking wet. As I passed through the kitchen, my husband is in the kitchen with the radio on. Hard to compete with that I guess. I get to my bedroom and grab a cotton blanket and wrap it around me and fall into bed. Then I have to search for something hard to press my neck on.

After a few minutes I realize I am going to have to put earplugs in to block out the radio downstairs.

It’s at least 15-20 minutes before husband comes in asking if I need anything else. I ask for my relpax, so he brings it and briefly puts some pressure on my neck. I could have him do that for hours until the pain goes away, but he leaves after about 2 minutes, and I have no choice but to accept it, because again, my head will punish me mercilessly if I get upset in any way. I can focus on nothing but the pain, and overcoming it.

I cannot ask for help, because I cannot call out, because the pain will skyrocket. I dare not risk getting up to go ask quietly, because the pain will skyrocket. I cannot get upset about this, because the pain will skyrocket. I cannot think about how many times I have told him this, because the pain will skyrocket. I cannot ask them to be quiet, because the pain will skyrocket. I am paralyzed and at the mercy of others.

I start thinking “is this what hell will be like?” and I think how grateful I am that at least I have the hope that the pain will end at least in the next 12 hours max. Hell goes on forever, with no relief. I start to think “would a Good God do this to ANYONE?” and then chastise myself for my low view of God’s holiness. And remember how thankful I should be for his gracious gift of salvation from an eternity of torment, of which this is only a small taste.

The relpax works, thankfully, within a half hour, and I am able to fall asleep. Husband comes in to ask me something I don’t remember. I fall back asleep. I have to get up by 4 to go to the store and get something for my daughter’s dance shoes, which she has to wear the next day to her lesson. The pain is gone by then, but the sour stomach and motion sickness has returned. I take two of the non drowsy dissolvable meclizine and make my daughter drive to the store while I basically keep my eyes closed as much as possible to avoid the motion sickness.

It takes about three hours of wandering slowly through the stores to get what I need. I figured as long as I had to go out anyway in the first place, and as long as I wasn’t getting worse I better get my errands done so I don’t have to go out again the next day, which will be my recuperation day.

We got home around 7 ish, I don’t remember for sure. I was up for a short time and then crashed in my bed early. The next day was spent sleeping quite a bit. Still wasn’t able to eat all that well, but slowly got better through the day. Slowly my life returns to normal. (which actually isn't all that normal but.. ok!)

The Lord Jesus knows that we will suffer eternally, far more than we suffer anything here on earth, if we depart this world without his atoning blood applied to us and his righteousness granted to our account. He knows we are but dust. Therefore he left his kingly throne in heaven, crammed his omnipotence, omnipresence, and omniscience, into a human form, born of a virgin, and walked this earth for 33 years in a very hard land. He never sinned but was tempted in all ways as we are tempted, so that he can sympathize with our weaknesses (Hebrews 4:15). He was always in communion with God the father and was God the Son, the Word made flesh. (John 1:1) He healed the sick, made the lame to walk and the blind to see. He fulfilled all the Messianic prophecies. He rebuked the religious leaders for their belief that they could make themselves righteous by following the law and doing good deeds. He was handed over to the authorities, and by an unfair trial they condemned him to a gruesome death on a cross, naked and bleeding and humiliated. To all this he submitted voluntarily. (John 10:17-18) Three days later he rose again and appeared to many ( I Corinthians 15: 3-7) All this was done to fulfill what God had determined would save us from his wrath in eternity. His wrath abides now on all who do not believe, because of their sins, and they will experience the full power of that wrath for eternity, if they die in their sins, without having their sins atoned for by faith in Jesus Christ and his death and resurrection.

The pain of a migraine, or a toothache, or arthritis, or a broken bone...or a slipped disc - that is nothing compared to the eternal punishment for sin which a perfectly Holy God has determined will be the payment for one's sins. The only way to avoid this payment is to have Jesus pay it for you. He offers forgiveness freely to all who truly repent (turn from) their sins and believe on him. Today if you hear his voice, do not harden your heart. (Heb 4:7) Repent and believe the gospel. Turn to him and trust him, and his Word alone. He has offered to spare you from the just punishment for your sins, which to us may seem like small things, but to a God which is infinite and perfectly holy, each offense, each lie, each covetous thought, each lustful thought, makes us unclean and guilty of breaking the whole law (James 2:10), and worthy only to be thrown in the fire which never goes out.

Turn to him in thankfulness for his great love in paying for you and offering to spare you from this awful fate. He did it because he loves you. Those who come to him in true repentance and faith he will not cast out. (John 6:37) Turn to him this day, for you are not guaranteed another breath.