The Gift of Pain

I always try to let people know of good books or what I'm reading.
There is an amazing book called, “The Gift of Pain,” by Dr. Paul Brand and Philip Yancy. If you get a chance, read it. The book tells the story of Dr. Paul Brand. It describes his work and research with leprosy patients in India. It talks about his new ways of treating babies with club feet. What he learned eventually even began to show important new ways in how severe cases of diabetes should be treated. What he discovered was that pain is ultimately needed for survival. When you don’t perceive pain, you don’t know what is causing harm to the body. If you couldn’t feel the burn from the hot stove, you would just burn your hands and get infections. If you didn’t receive a jolt of pain every time you stubbed your toe, eventually this would lead to much larger problems down the road. Pain is your bodies protection system. Lets face it, without it, many of us would run our bodies into the ground. The slight tweak in the hamstring, sure it hurts, but if it didn’t, you can bet most of us would run through it until the tweak turned into a tear. Instead of 3 weeks of adjusted activity, now it’s 6 months!
Pain is a gift that no one wants. Realize this point, if your feeling pain, your body is working. That is a great epiphany.