I’m a chronic migraine sufferer. And they choose the sweetest times to strike… let’s say, in the line for the Matterhorn at Disney, or just before we leave for a picnic, or when my kids want to wrestle.

Add to that a bad back this summer. I’ve had this wicked kink or pinched nerve or something that shoots pain up my arms and down my back like I’m three and I’ve got my finger in a socket again. Usually this trip, my maladies would take turns. Bad back day, migraine day. Bad back, migraine. I think the bad back shooting sparks everywhere made me stiff, which triggered my nerve endings and incited them to mutiny the following morning. Avast, ye scurvy dogs!

So enter this morning, when I wake up with both. I sit up, my face is gone, swollen and train tracked and yikes — even more than usual. And the pain comes in waves. Ba-bump. Ba-bump. Ba-bump. And because it’s now three weeks in a row of this silly game (with a few glorious, pain free days in between) my brave face melts like a snowman in July and I start to cry.

Yes, I’m a grown man, most days. Shocker. Grown men cry. “I’m so tired of being in pain,” I sob, as my family gathers round me and hugs me and whispers tender prayers that I don’t have the faith to believe at the time. I swallow my meds (which is as close as I get to gettin’ all liquered up), Shauna gets behind the wheel, and we bomb North through the intersection of Nevada, Arizona, and Utah, all the way up to Salt Lake city for the night.

There will come a day (sweet Jesus, I can almost taste it) when all the pain will go. My headaches will vanish like the morning mist. Those tears at the bedside won’t be wiped away by my loving family, but my father in heaven. No more kinks, or pinches, or burns, or stubbed toes. No more pulled muscles or torn ligaments or fractured wrists. No more arthritis, no more cancer, no more gout, no more MS, none of it, ever.

I wish so much that I could step into God at the moment he does that to me, so I could watch the look on my own face as I realize (gosh, I’m crying again as I write this) that I will never hurt again. But I guess I’ll get something even better than that. Cause I’ll be looking into his face.

Maybe I’ll be able to wipe his tears.

Tears of joy.

By the way, he answered my families’ prayers today.