Speaking Through My Pain

My apologies to the man in the gift shop in the Rocky Mountain town recently who pushed his way in front of me to look at post cards when I was already there looking at the same ones.  I backed up a bit and said in my most diplomatic way, "You pushed right in front of me." to which he replied, "I wanted to get one of these cards" and as he walked away I said, "You had already pushed in front of my wife a few minutes ago." because he had.  She had just given up on looking at what she wanted to and put her items back and gave him the rack for him to peruse but I decided I was not going to give up so easily.  And besides, my leg hurt a lot. 

I don't blame that man for hurting my leg because he had nothing to do with it.  That actually happened about two weeks ago and I have been dealing with the pain and getting help to deal with it for the past two weeks.  We had vacation planned a long time before I hurt my leg so I did not want that injury to prevent us from going so we went ahead and took off for the Rocky Mountains.  Making the transition from jet to Denver and then bus and rental car proved painful at times but being in the cool Rocky Mountains was a great salve for my spirit if not for my leg.  I went to a doctor not too far away who seemed to help me out and have been feeling like I have been getting better a little bit at a time. 

We could not leave Estes Park without browsing the shops as the tourists do so we were determined to look around today even if I spent a lot of time sitting on benches while my wife looked in the stores and then returned to where I was posted.  When I was looking at the cards in the first shop, my leg pain was about a 9 on a scale of 1 to 10.  That poor man who happened to push himself in front of my wife and me was rude but I should have probably overlooked his rudeness and then moved on to another place to be in pain but the pain seemed to say to me, "Don't let that joker get away with this!"  So, I spoke to him as most of us would when we have been mistreated and then left, happy that I stood up for my rights.  I guess I had second thoughts about it, though, thinking maybe retreat would have been better than telling him what he had done wrong.  Who knows....I am human, after all.

We all speak out of our pain at times.  Sometimes it is physical pain and sometimes it is emotional in origin. We speak words that express the pain we feel in life and want others to feel our pain too even if they cannot actually feel the depth of what we are feeling.  The pain comes out in our words and actions and we may even mistreat others close to us.  All we can do is learn from our experiences and hope that we will continue to grow and become better at dealing with pain and with life.  We grow with every painful experience and learn what is the best way to handle life's situations because of our experiences.