A Different Kind of Pain Relief

I'm pretty sure my brain was beating me from the inside of my skull earlier when I got home from campus.

And I'm not talking about a simple headache; I mean that throbbing, binabanat, nangangalay sensation where the insides of your forehead feel as though they're being stretched thin like slime. The kind you get after a long day of hopping from one jeepney and train station to the other, inhaling black smoke and that unmistakable acridness of the scorching summer heat.

It didn't help that the back of my eyes felt like they were burning, too (pakagandang combo). So, like any other rational person, I tried sleeping it off. It helped while it lasted; of course, I had to wake up again. And when I did, still the throbbing persisted. Worsened, even. As someone with low pain tolerance (because I usually don't experience headaches, let alone ones that reach this scale), I was stubbornly eager for relief. I took my daily vitamin and some over-the-counter medicine in the hopes of it getting better.

A futile effort. I was grumbling at this point. Maybe close to banging my head repeatedly against the closest wall.

But then a thought occurred to me:

Why not just ask healing from the source Himself?

I plopped down on the bed, gripped my head with more force than necessary using one hand, and prayed:

"Lord, I know You can heal me. Please take this away. In the Name of Jesus Christ, I declare healing upon my head."

And the next words you'll be reading, I type with the same clarity of a person who's never had to deal with a pulsing head in their entire life: Hindi ko pa natatapos yung dasal, nag-dull na yung pangangalay.

You can't tell me that was a mere coincidence.

The relief was minor and gradual. But also obvious and continuous. Eventually, it reached a point where the pain was tolerable enough for me to grab my Bible and read a few chapters off of Luke.

The crazier part? The longer I kept reading, the lighter my head felt.

And now, here I am. Typing this—the burning behind my eyes and the stretching within my head gone.

One might think that a headache is too minor of a matter to bother the Creator of all things living and non-living with. It's not. The Bible doesn't tell us to raise only some of our anxieties to Him. Neither does it tell us to come to Him only right when we feel like we're on the verge of collapse.

"Cast all your anxiety on Him because He cares for you." (1 Peter 5:7)

So the next time you find yourself facing inconveniences in life, I hope you'll consider reaching out to Him, too—whether it concerns a particularly insistent headache, a lesson you can't quite fully comprehend, a nagging feeling inside your chest concerning the results of your college entrance test, or a torn heartstring from an unrequited crush.

Because nothing is ever trivial to the LORD when it concerns His beloved children.

——————

Author's note:

He is so goood! After today, aayusin ko na body clock ko. Lowkey thinking this might be His way of reminding me to fix my sleep sched hahahaha

Art Credits to Josefina Holmlund

|| August 4th, 2025