I am having hip replacement surgery on June 2nd. The doctor doing it has nurses and other doctors as part of their team. They have this app that I downloaded and that they use to communicate with me regarding my preparation for surgery. One of the things I do on the app is fill out a daily questionnaire. One of the questions is how much pain I am feeling. I am supposed to answer with a one if there is no pain and a ten if it is the worst pain I have ever felt in my life. I always put a five, but I am inclined to put a two. It is a funny question to answer for me. Pain is not an easy thing to measure or evaluate. My Dad raised me to ignore pain and tolerate it but not to measure it or compare it with some other pain. Pain happens to everybody all the time. If you can do something about it, you do; if you can’t, tolerate it.

I take two pain pills in the morning for my hip, and they help a lot. I suppose if it hurt worse than it does, I would ignore the dosage on the container and take two in the evening as well. My hip has been hurting for a while, and I am sure there is a getting used to the pain as it gradually increases. The doctor commented that I must have been feeling a lot of pain when he looked at the X-rays of my hip, but when he said that, I thought, “It isn’t that bad, more of a constant annoyance.” Jesus felt a lot worse pain in the scourging and the crucifixion He experienced for me. I would guess that His pain went way past a ten. For me, a much worse pain is the pain of failure when I blow it big time. Or the pain I feel from another person who I care for and who hurts me. I believe that the pain Jesus felt when God the Father turned His back on Him because He had become our sin was much worse than the physical pain He felt. Or the pain from the shame and guilt He felt because He had become our sin. I have no idea how much pain Jesus felt when He died for me, but it seems whiny to call my pain a five if He was a ten. So I am going to call His a thousand and mine a two.