From the time I was born, I’ve been plagued with illness after illness. I had two surgeries before I even turned 18. I’ve been to the ER at least once a year if not more for every year I’ve been alive. I’ve had stitches, EEG's, MRI’s, and more IV’s than I count. I probably look relatively healthy. I guess I do since whenever I tell people that I am once again sick, they respond “But, honey, you’re too young.” I wish it worked that way, but it doesn’t. Now, along with my host of physical illnesses, I’ve developed depression and crippling anxiety. A lot of my days are spent in bed, suffering from some awful crossroads of physical and mental illness, and I promise there is nothing in the world that I hate more.
From the outside looking in, it’s really easy to give advice on these situations. Living in the Bible belt, a lot of that advice is often religious, which is usually fine. I’m an extremely religious person. There is nothing that means more to me than with someone says they are praying for me. What I am not OK with is, “Just give it up to God” or the extended version, “You just need to have faith. Pray, read the scriptures more.” It gets even better when they say it about mental illness, and I explain that that mental illnesses are actual illnesses, often caused by chemical imbalances in the brain, and they respond with “Well, God can heal anything. You just need to have faith.”
Yes. God can heal anything. I believe that with everything in me. But I also believe that God doesn’t. I wish I knew why. I wish I could say something like, “This is part of His plan,” but I don’t even know if I believe that. That’s OK, because it’s not my job to make sense of anything that happens. Our minds are too small to understand the wonder and mystery and tragedy that happens in this world. I’ll leave that up to God. Because I trust him. I trust Him so much that I don’t need Him to heal me to know that He loves me or to know that my faith is strong.
Please do not question my faith. Please do not tell me that the answer to all my problems is a simple prayer. You are not there all the nights that I lie awake crying, holding on with the patience of Job. Job was a man I always admired and never understood. He once said, “Though he slay me, yet I will trust in him” (Job 13:15). That seemed like the most backwards thing in the world until I found myself in the same position. My papaw talks a lot about all of the miracles that he sees at his church, about how the whole church prayed for this girl who was blind and she immediately got her vision, or how a man who was dying from Stage Four cancer was miraculously healed after getting a blessing. These stories excited me. I wanted to be better, so when I was 6 or 7, my papaw pulled me up to the front of the church. The preacher laid his hands on my head and gave me a blessing while the whole church knelt in prayer. After it was over, I opened my eyes and my papaw asked if I felt any different. I didn’t. Now, 14 years later I am arguably worse.
I cried that day. I cried because I didn’t understand. I wanted to be healed; I had faith. God healed tons of other people, but not me. I went home and clutched my Precious Moments children’s bible and asked God what was wrong with me. I’m better about that now, but I still do it sometimes when someone tries to tell me it’s my fault that I feel this way. When you tell me that if I do x,y, and z and I’ll be healed and then I do them and I’m not, I have to wonder why God seems to love me less than everybody else.
I don’t need that in my life. Remember in the New Testament when Lazarus was sick? Mary and Martha immediately sent for Jesus because they had faith that He could heal them. These were Godly women. Mary had washed the feet of her Savior. He loved them both so dearly. Yet, when Jesus found out, He purposely stayed where he was for two more days. He let Lazarus die. We all know that it was so He could display His power and raise Lazarus from the dead, but how do you think Mary and Martha felt those two days? How do you think they felt when their friend and Lord, who had the power to do anything in the world, refused to come heal their brother? Do you think they felt betrayed? Do you think they felt like they didn’t have enough faith or that they had somehow sinned or that Jesus didn’t love them enough?
I’m here waiting. My “two days” wait may last my entire life. I can do everything right, and still have all my problems. James 1: 2-4 says, “2 Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters,[a] whenever you face trials of many kinds,3 because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance.4 Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.” Being sick doesn’t seem like joy, but I trust that I will come out of this better than I came in.
I’m obviously still going to do everything in my power to get better: go to the doctor, and take my medicine, and eat better, and put forth constant effort. Help me with that. Support me in that. Ask what you can do for me. Heck, even pray for me. But, do not blame this on me.
