Pain is good because it reminds me that I’m still alive.
I’m thankful for dirty glasses. It’s only on the outside, not the inside. My eyesight isn’t gone (yet).
I’m thankful for crying eyes. Cutting onions, repelling foreign objects, thinking of something sad. All of these evoke my tears. Check, check, check. Everything’s working properly.
I’m thankful for frozen toes from walking through puddles of ice water. Some of my diabetic patients last year couldn’t have felt the cold in their feet. Now they can’t walk either.
I’m thankful for the aching heart. It tells me that my heart is still soft. Many harden their hearts, stubbornly hiding from pain. Mine says that it is still tender.
But I have this treasure in an earthen vessel, that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of me. I am hard-pressed on every side, yet not crushed; I am perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed— always carrying about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in my body. (II Corinthians 4:7-10)