Sometimes I wake up and feel like my body is about eight years behind my spirit. Sometimes when I lay down, it feels like I’m not laying down hard enough. Sometimes my sinuses get infected with bacteria and I can’t do what I am going to school to do. Sometimes I’m so dizzy that everyone around me does a funny little cautious dance to catch me if needed. Sometimes I crave food, so much food, but my body is telling me that I don’t need it. Sometimes my joints and muscles ache so bad I wonder if I don’t remember running a marathon. Sometimes I discover a bald spot on my head and give up wondering how long it will take to grow back the hair. Sometimes I feel like I need to accept that I’ll always be sick and never know why. But ALWAYS there is a beautiful, beckoning, gentle, fierce, perfectly timed whisper/symphony reminding me that I am not a sickness, and sickness is not me.
I don’t know if I feel compelled to ask the body of Christ, or just mankind in general, to look at sickness differently or if I just want to share some thoughts so they aren’t camping out in my head. Either way, take a look at this passage of scripture with me. “I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.” Ezekiel 36:25-27 ESV
Earthly instinct tells me to be offended at this verse. What idols am I clinging onto that are causing me to be sick? What filth has my heart collected that would cause it to beat quickly and painfully and wake me up at 4am? What rules have I not been careful enough to obey? Well, those are stupid thoughts. It doesn’t work that way. God doesn’t create anything bad. My punishment for running from Him has been nailed to a cross for thousands of years. God only gives love and healing and joy.
So why on earth is this constant, seemingly unending suffering? I know that God allows trials. I know that He allows us to walk through valleys. I also know that “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.” Psalm 23:4 ESV He is walking with me. He is guiding me as if I’m a little lost sheep. He is my Shepherd on breathtaking mountaintops AND in dark, painful valleys.
I’m learning, always learning, that God calls us to be patient. He doesn’t call us to accept pain or sickness or death or discomfort. He calls us to speak against those things with truth and be PATIENT. I will openly admit that I am capable of making a huge mess of things. I will admit that I don’t always find great success after seeing a highly regarded doctor. I don’t want anything in my hands. Or any human hands for that matter. I want Jesus. So I will choose to speak truth over my life, and not accept defeat.
“In his kindness God called you to share in his eternal glory by means of Christ Jesus. So after you have suffered a little while, he will restore, support, and strengthen you, and he will place you on a firm foundation.”
1 Peter 5:10 NLT I will read this and speak it and pray it and think it until not only my spirit recognizes it as truth, but my body does, too. If any of you need healing but just can’t seem to find it, remember the perfect firm foundation that He is perfectly creating for you in His perfect timing. I can do that, at least.
One last thought: there are a lot of things that we do to each other to discourage healing, even if we don’t realize it. Here are some things I’ve realized since being so sick for so long…
– When you tell someone to just be happy, choose joy, or stop “dwelling” on sickness, you are just pushing them deeper into doubt. When the promise of joy is hard to reach, don’t remind someone that they should be reaching harder. Help them reach it.
– When you remind someone that someone else has it worse, you are not only discrediting their feelings, you are reminding them that their sickness could get worse. You are making them feel guilty for being sick.
– Finally, when you tell someone that they “don’t look sick” you are hand-stacking a cement wall between that person and their confidence in Jesus. Try thinking of something else to say. Quote scripture. Hug them. Tell them that you acknowledge their pain, but even more, that you acknowledge the reality of healing.
Just some thoughts. Sickness doesn’t own us. We belong to Jesus, and He is so very good.
Love and prayers for you, dear friends.
-Rachel