Anger can be a response of empathy when we're helpless, as much as futility can be the countenance of the faithful. Horrendous thoughts for self-harm are melded within the boiling pot of the most resilient of all people when pain afflicts. Chronic pain transforms the bravest of souls and sends them cowering into corners never previously imagined.

All this and more is up for grabs for those dealing with chronic pain – whether physical, mental, emotional or spiritual, and much of it a conglomeration of these.

Dichotomies and paradoxes float with sadistic buoyancy in the realm of unrelenting anguish.

They exhort us not to prejudge.

If you are angry without reason, without sense, without caution, with brutal candor, because you're stricken with a cavitating, gnawing nemesis, you are not alone. It is enough to try the perspective of the gentlest saint.

There ought to be no judgement cast against those caught in the whirlpool of life without mercy.

Those who cannot escape their own self-recrimination ought to be stopped with love, listened to, graced with God's presence in you for their encouragement, and cared for as they define care.

What is for them a living hell has no answers, so there ought to be no questions added to their burden.

There is such a thing as a full-octane living hell, and many there are who live it.

If it is your lot to be the bearer of such pain, do accept the best I can give: prayers. I believe prayer is a power beyond worldly precedent. If it is your lot that you care for such a person, every ounce and sinew of strength be yours, in the wee hours, in the temerity of the torment you endure for their sake. Hold on with all the hope you can muster.

There very much is the place for asking Almighty God, "What point is there in this?"

I feel certain that through such unheralded paroxysm, a peace is being sought after and will be attained.

Strive for it with stillness of gait.

Wait on it with a tenacity that does not give up.

And, trust God even more. Such is the enigma of life that such a trial is manifest for such a purpose.