A Journey Over Stones

Greetings Dear Reader,

Most of us hate pain. Most of us would rather not have it at all if possible. Physical and emotional pains are very different and for some reason for the last month or so I have been recalling the most extreme physical pain I have ever experienced.

It was over thirty years ago. I was just a few months away from high school graduation. We went to a school wide retreat at a camp in the North Carolina Mountains. During one of our recreational activities I broke my leg very badly. Both bones were snapped, I ruptured ligaments, and tore tendons. The initial pain was dreadfully painful. It was about one in the afternoon.

What followed was the real pain. The camp staff rushed to my aid. They arrived with a stretcher and immobilized my leg then secured me to the stretcher. Four of them carried me to an ancient waiting station wagon. As carefully as possible they laid me on a mattress in the back of the station wagon. Then the torture began in earnest.

During the trip to the car, every jostle and slight shift send waves of nauseating pain rolling up my leg. Then as the driver started the engine to the station wagon one of the camp staff and one of my teachers climbed in the back of the wagon with me. They iced down my leg as the station wagon began to move over the smooth driveway to the road that led out of the camp to the highway. It was that road that was my torture.

For the next twenty minutes over a road paved with loose stones and another thirty over washboard dirt that was the pain. The suspension in the station wagon was far past its useful prime. The stones in the road were fresh and thick. Every bump sent shocks of pain racing up my leg. The man from the camp began to weep as he saw the pain I was enduring.

I began to pray. I asked God for one thing. I did not ask for the pain to stop. I did not ask for the road to be smooth. I asked that God would give me the strength to endure the pain. I lost myself in this request as I journeyed over those stones and across that long washboard road. Shortly after we reached the smoothness of the state highway I slipped into a fugue. The next thing I remember was being carried into the clinic in the small town nearest to the camp.

The intern at the clinic gave me a shot of morpheme and set my leg. He put a cast on it and told me to see an orthopedic surgeon immediately on my return home. What followed was surgery and months of recuperation. What I remember most about that journey from the camp to the clinic was the third person in the back of the station wagon with me.

Neither the camp counselor nor the teacher recalls a third person being there with us. It was a young woman and just as I began praying she began to sing. The song was one of my Grandfather’s favorites, God Leads Us Along. It was one of the things he used to sing when we worked in his garden or sat by a river fishing. The entire text of the song is at the end of this post.

My journey over stones was one of the worst physical pains I have ever endured. The teacher told me weeks later that when I slipped into that state of semi-consciousness that I was quietly singing that same song.

The pain never really subsided until the morpheme kicked in. What I did learn is that we can endure pain and even find a song in the midst of it if we are willing to do so. I have forgotten that lesson along the way sometimes but it has been on my mind a great deal lately.

Wishing you joy in the journey,

Aramis Thorn
Mat 13:52 So Jesus said to them, "That is why every scribe who has become a disciple of the kingdom of heaven is like a home owner. He brings new and old things out of his treasure store."

In shady, green pastures, so rich and so sweet,
God leads His dear children along;
Where the water's cool flow bathes the weary one's feet,
God leads His dear children along.

Some through the waters, some through the flood,
Some through the fire, but all through the blood;
Some through great sorrow, but God gives a song,
In the night season and all the day long.

Sometimes on the mount where the sun shines so bright,
God leads His dear children along;
Sometimes in the valley, in darkest of night,
God leads His dear children along.

Some through the waters, some through the flood,
Some through the fire, but all through the blood;
Some through great sorrow, but God gives a song,
In the night season and all the day long.

Though sorrows befall us and evils oppose,
God leads His dear children along;
Through grace we can conquer, defeat all our foes,
God leads His dear children along.

Some through the waters, some through the flood,
Some through the fire, but all through the blood;
Some through great sorrow, but God gives a song,
In the night season and all the day long.

Away from the mire, and away from the clay,
God leads His dear children along;
Away up in glory, eternity's day,
God leads His dear children along.

Some through the waters, some through the flood,
Some through the fire, but all through the blood;
Some through great sorrow, but God gives a song,
In the night season and all the day long. – George A. Young