Migraine Rejoicing

A day of dizziness, of increasing pain, of eyes shut against light and ears aching against overwhelming noise, leaves me emotionally crippled by night.  Tears are quick even when I see the comedy in them.  When the pressure lifts and my head is no longer pinched, the feeling is indescribable.  I will try to describe it anyway.

Relief from a migraine opens floodgates of joy and thanksgiving.  Dizziness departs and my eyes can look once again painlessly towards windows.  I have noticed time and again how beautiful the world is right after a headache finally eases off of my brain.  Colors sparkle, light flashes, the world sings unbidden, and usually unnoticed, but for that day.  I try to hide my laughter as I walk alone down a bike path to reach my church on Sunday morning.  The bikers passing on my left and the joggers avoiding eye contact might think something's wrong with me, when in fact it has seldom been so right.  My appreciation for Mr. Magorium bubbles to the surface in an excess of minute delight.

"Now we wait," says the assistant.  "No," returns Mr. Magorium, "We breathe.  We pulse.  We regenerate.  Our hearts beat, our minds create, our souls ingest.  37 seconds well used is a lifetime."

I wonder, as I note the careful dispersion of glowing morning on sheltered leaves, why my attitude towards all of life lacks the sheen of post-migraine jubilation.  When God lifts the spiritual migraines from my soul, why do I not break into singing as King David?  Where is my daily zest for all things when the Cross, always fresh with Christ's blood shed for my daily guilt, hangs over my now white soul?  Salvation is every day.

"Depression is apt to turn us away from the ordinary commonplace things of God's creation, but whenever God comes, the inspiration is to do the most natural simple things--the things we would never have imagined God was in, and as we do them we find He is there."  ~Oswald Chambers

All of me becomes light when my physical body finds relief. My eternal soul is granted relief every day.  Ought I to take it any more for granted just because it is all the more common?  I hear cicadas hum, and feel cool wood beneath my feet, and my pen scratches across the page.  My head is dizzy again, but I still sing praises because my soul is set free.  Paul, in seven chapters of Romans, reaches a painfully acute dilemma.  "Wretched man that I am!  Who will set me free from the body of this death?"  His words scream.  I hear a pause before his next hushed sentence:  "Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!"  Chapter eight is victory.  It is relief from the migraine.  It is ice on the back of Paul's head, peppermint on the temples, Excedrin taking effect, eyes wide open toward the light.  It is life, and the life is the light of the world.

We breathe.  We pulse.  We regenerate.  

"Bring my soul out of prison, So that I may give thanks to Thy name; The righteous will surround me, For Thou wilt deal bountifully with me." ~Psalm 142