You Get Used to Things... and That's Bad

When I was in college I was in a pretty bad car wreck in which my back, neck and right hand suffered significant damage. That's been more than 30 years ago. Today, I live with pain in those areas and most of the time I have a headache due to the damage in my neck. The thing is, I am pretty well used to it, so much so that when I wake up without a headache, I sometimes have a hard time figuring out what is "wrong." Isn't that odd... normal and no pain seems wrong? Today happens to be one of the days where the headache is more intense and I've been limited in what I could do. I found myself just sitting in my recliner, in the silence, thinking about that car accident and how it has affected my life. My doctor has told me he could put me on medications that would help with the pain, but the thing is, those medicines only mask the pain, and in the process, they add further problems in my life. To me, it's just not worth those problems and health risks, so I choose not to go that route. My doctor asked me about my choice a few years ago and dealing with constant headaches and I said to him, "you get used to it." Recalling that conversation my mind took it off in a spiritual direction. People get used to their pain. They get used to their circumstances and problems as they go on with life and the pain becomes their new "normal." 

This morning, I was sitting in a restaurant having breakfast and there were a couple of older women there who were having a very loud conversation so that everyone in the place heard every word they were saying. To make matters worse, both of them cursed worse than anything I've been around a long time... and their subject matter was worse! They were very graphic in their descriptions of people. Both obviously worked in a nursing home, and they were crud and sexually explicit in the things they were saying. One of the women at one point said to her friend, "Maybe we should keep it down. People are staring at us." Her counterpart said, "F them! I don't care what people think of me!" I've wondered ever since this morning just when she quit caring what other people thought of her? Was she raised that way or had bad life experiences caused her to be so crude and calloused? Did she really not care? Or was this the lie she was telling herself? Either way, she has become used to several things. She is used to being thought ill of. She is used to behaving in socially unacceptable ways. She was much older than I am and I can tell you that in my day, it simply WAS NOT acceptable for any person, let alone a woman to behave in that way. What happened to her? I don't know and most likely never will... but the point is, she has become "used to" it all and this has become her normal. I fear that happens to a lot of people. They don't set out to behave the way they do. Many don't set out to where they no longer go to church or serve God, but along the way, one thing happened to keep them out of church, then another, then another and somewhere along the way the idea of going to church seemed odd, or out of place to them. I think if you asked most of them, they would tell you that they are OK, that they still love God... but if they did, wouldn't they want to go to worship with other believers? But this is normal for them now, and as such, they don't even notice the pain anymore.