Setting My Priority Right

So in this writing I feel like sharing my spiritual journey. Before I begin, I’m telling you it’s going to be one longer story than usual.

Those in my inner circle know that in the past 12 months I have been recovering from a condition called HNP. This stands for Hernia Nucleus Pulposus, or in Indonesia commonly called “syaraf kejepit”. It’s basically a severe lower back pain. This is extremely, bottom line here, painful. I got this from doing a wrong posture on my face painting job. On my regular face painting jobs, I always bring along a sort of high stool for children to sit on. But on one particular day, I couldn’t bring one.

But I thought, “Hey the party must go on. I’ll just make everything works.”

Then I painted 3 hours straight, standing, facing toward children who were sitting on a normal chair. That means I had to bend way too over. And as soon as I got home, my back was hurting.

At first I expected it was just a muscle sore, you know.

I went to see my doctor in Australia, she gave me a pain killer and some sort of muscle’s reliever.

But the story didn’t end there.

The pain didn’t go. In all that situations, I was in a position to go back to Indonesia.

I continued seeing doctors in Indonesia. Did a MRI scan of my back. But no one told me a clear explanation of what it was I was having or what I was going through. It was as if I was in a black hole. Everything was dark. I went to what so called the best hospital in Jakarta, to see a professor who have been taking care of celebrities, but really I just feel like punching him in the face right now when I look back at it. Because all he did was giving me a wrong corset’s size, giving no proper counseling as if he’s always in hurries, and charged a very high price for that. Honestly, he gave me a male corset for my lumbar support, not the female one instead.

Obviously at that time I didn’t know. I was in a heavy pain, and all I could do was trying to believe in him. But I still sense something’s not right. My back kept hurting, even more after I started wearing the corset. To one point, I gave up medication. I didn’t have anymore motivation to go seeking help from doctors. Because including him, I have been changing doctors three times yet I still had no clue what’s happening.

All I wanted was for someone to see at my MRI scan, listen to me, and explain what’s wrong with my body.

In all honesty, I cried a lot. When I reflect to it now, these past few months have been the lowest and worst point of my life. My husband is the only living being who witnesses everything. Oh well, not really witnessing, since he’s in Australia and I’m in Indonesia. But he’s always there for me with all the limitations we had. He knows how I cried and wanted to die.

Yes, not even lying when I said I wanted to die.

I guess when you’re in pain for a long time, especially when you don’t really get an explanation of what’s happening with your body, you’re going to start questioning everything.

You start questioning your whole existence, whether you’ve done enough.

You start questioning if you will ever recover, or if you will have to spend the rest of your life with the pain.

You start questioning what the hell you did wrong to make you deserve such punishment.

You start questioning if you will give other people difficulties with your existence, and if they still will love you no matter what your shape is.

Those were horrible, horrible, horrible thoughts.

And I got caught up in them for some quite times, until one day, I came across a youtube video.

That was a video of Ustadz Adi Hidayat, I forget what the title was, what important is that he talks about how we should deal with a pain or disease that even doctor can’t handle.

That video changed my perspective of pain. May Allah gives him the best in dunya and akhirah.

I cried as I watched the video, but this time it was a good kind of cry. Not a frustration cry, it was a hope cry. 

To sum the video up, to deal with such condition, what we need to do are:

1.       Asking Allah for a recovery in order to get yourself closer to Him

This pointing at me right on the nose. Because all those times, I never asked Him a recovery for my akhirah sakes. I was too focused on this dunya. I asked Him to heal me, so that I could get back to work, do this and that. And instead of learning to get closer to Him, I demanded Him too much on my trivial dunya businesses.

2.       Reflect on yourself, on all the wrong things you’ve been doing.

But not in order to curse yourself, to correct and evaluate instead. There might be sins we regularly do, that we need to fix. Maybe it’s time to completely change how the game works, right. This reminded me of those gossiping accounts I follow on instagram, those delays I take to do shalah when the times come. I gotta be kidding my self. I demanded Allah for a speedy recovery, but when He calls me to come to Him I simply ignored. Does it make sense? I had a huge problem on putting Him as a priority. For sure I needed to fix.

3.       Ask Him and Trust Him, because He’s the only one who could heal us. Especially when even doctors have given up.

I had a trust issue on basically everyone, except those I have accepted in my inner circle. But I never once thought it could lead to not trusting Allah. As much as my ignorance could go, I denied the fact that I have been doubting Him. I guess it started since I grew older and realized reality doesn’t always keep up with expectations. I failed to learn that what’s there for me would always be the best for me from Him, even though it might not be what I wanted at the time. So in this case, yes I prayed and asked Him to heal me, but I actually didn’t really believe that indeed, He’s the only one who could heal me. I have never accepted that fact as a whole before. That’s hard to explain, because it’s really deep in my lungs.

Right after I watched the video, I cried whole night. This wasn’t a light thing to take. I have been so wrong all the time. The way I think of this pain. My perspective of it was so distorted I couldn’t see the core problem. This was an opportunity for changes. He has been calling me for change in 12 months, yet I ignored Him all the time. It will just be easy peasy for Him to give me back my health. But perhaps He wants me to come back to Him first. To put Him as priority from now on, not a third class citizen on my schedule.

And so with everything I could, I tried my best to return to Him. It’s a progress, even to this day. I unfollowed those gossiping Instagram accounts and tried my best to do shalah right after adzan. Those are just examples. There are many more things I’m currently fixing in my life. As my efforts to put Him a priority.

You might think those illogicals, but I am telling you, since I started to change my perspective of this pain and got back to Allah, things started to find its ways. I am now seeing a doctor whom I completely trust. She gave me lots and lots of explanations of what is going on with my body. She answers all of my confusions, recommended me to a physiotherapist whom I also really comfortable with. Alhamdulillah. Everything that felt so hard before, finding a doctor I feel connected to, finally been sorted out.

I am now on my 10^th physiotherapy session and been making lots of progresses.

There is still a long way to go on this healing process. I have to do exercises everyday, swim twice a week, and do more therapy sessions. But the worst has literally passed.

All I could think about right now is that really this is just a blink of an eye for Him to heal me.

But all He wants to see is me to be awaken and get back to Him.

To sort my priorities right, and not be fooled by this dunya.

And I’m eternally lucky to have this opportunity.

I’m grateful to have to go through this painful experience, that would save me later on akhirah.

Alhamdulillah.