A headache can be a very clarifying thing.

For instance, last weekend. I don't believe I've ever really experienced a true headache before last Thursday, when I suffered my first migraine. The pain clouded everything around me, making only the knot of tortured nerve endings just behind my left eyeball feel real. That and, every fifteen minutes or so, the rush of nausea that sent me staggering over to my little trashbin in the E.R.

I'm remembering a quote, from Maryanne Wiggins' "Evidence of Things Unseen," when she describes pain as a purifying element, burning away all but the essential nature of its host. My "essential nature" was cowardly. I did not take courage, cling to faith, or find some other positive outlet for my suffering. I just curled up and waited for it to end, so my life could resume. So much for "in every disability lies a vocation," or any other noble sentiment that I had convinced myself I believed.

If my roots are so fragile as to be this easily unearthed, if "just getting through the pain" is all that is sustaining me through any trial, I need to take serious stock of my life's purpose. I need to remind myself that I am not here to have the smoothest, happiest, most pleasant life possible. Indeed, if I am fitting too snugly in those grooves, I probably could do with a bit of shaking up.

It was just a migraine, of course. It hurt, and then it receded, and now I'm living my life again. But if I'm blowing the headache out of proportion, I know at least that the lesson it taught me cannot be blown too big.

I need to live a purpose so vast and all-encompassing that no amount of suffering or sadness can rob it of its joy and satisfaction. A purpose that calls me to sacrifice, and sustains me with the assurance that any losses I count now will be rewarded a thousandfold and forever in heaven.