Giving it to God, part 3

This is part 3 of a 4 part series.  To read part 1, click here .  To read part 2, click here.

As much as I wanted to give up the idol I had made of my health and focus on God alone, it felt unattainable.  As weeks turned into months--and eventually I hit the one year anniversary of my constant headache--my weariness, fear and pain turned into anger.  The invitation to come closer seemed to be something I couldn't accept.  I wanted to, but the realization that God could heal me, he could take it all away in an instant if he wanted to, was more than I could handle.  I knew he had heard me crying out and begging for him to take this away, I knew he had seen my tears and my struggles and my fear and he wasn't fixing it.  I knew there was nowhere I could go to get away from God, (see Psalm 139:1-18) but my anger made me want to walk away from him.  I was giving my life to follow him; we had left our home in Washington, my husband had left his corporate job for full time ministry, we were living 1200 miles away from our families and friends and the return on all of that obedience was worsening health and constant pain.  I know that God owes me nothing.  I know that God made the ultimate sacrifice when he sent his son and sacrificed him for our sins. I know that scripture promises that God will never leave us or forsake us. But the knowing didn't change my feelings.  What I felt was abandonment, disregard, and total lack of concern.   And the longer I was angry the more I was sure that God wouldn't want to heal me because I wasn't showing him the reverence that he deserved.  I felt bound, held captive by this anger that I couldn't seem to let go of and the helplessness of knowing that I was the only thing keeping myself from the God that I loved more than anything.  Even on my angriest days, I still loved the Lord.  I still didn't want to try to do life without him.  I wasn't at the point of denying his existence.  But I also didn't know how to reconcile the love that I felt for God with my anger because of my lack of healing and my constant pain.  

I would like to say that I had some fantastic encounter with God that turned me around.  That somehow God showed me this divine purpose for my suffering that made every moment of pain worthwhile.  But that wasn't what happened.  Instead it was a decision.  It was as simple and as difficult as me just deciding that I couldn't go on so angry.  It was the decision to believe that God loves me more than I can ever comprehend and that if he was allowing me to be sick, I had to trust that he would use it for his glory.  So I began doing the things that I knew, the things that were the foundation of my relationship with God.  I started reading my bible, praying, participating in worship.  Most of all I started asking God to give me a new attitude.  I started asking God to heal my anger, to heal my wrong beliefs rather than my physical body.  I came to realize that God cares way more about the state of my heart (not my physical heart) than he does the state of my body.  God had been working on my healing for years and continued to invite me to look at life differently.  He asked me to develop an attitude that seeks to find the blessings instead of the problems.  As someone who leans toward being a pessimist this wasn't an easy thing.  One thing that really helped was a book that my husband gave me by Ann Voskamp called One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are.  One of the phrases she used in the book was "the beautiful ugly" which refers to finding the beauty God has blessed us with in the midst of difficulty.  As I started to list my blessings, to focus on gratitude, God began to change my heart.  He began to transform me into someone who can say that my circumstances may suck, but there are so many other things that are fantastic so I'm not going to be defined by the suckiness.  It's not a denial thing, it's not a refusal to see reality, it's choosing to believe that God really does have my best interests at heart and there is beauty in this life if I open my eyes to see it.  

Giving it to God, part 1

This week, I'm exploring how God has been teaching me to give up control of my health. Today's post is part 1 of 4 posts in this series. 

I can remember a conversation with my Mom when I was really young.  I knew that I had already had surgery for 3 hernias before I was 2.  And then I heard someone talk about hernias being caused by straining or lifting too much.  So I asked, "Mom, did I lift heavy things when I was a baby?"  She told me no and I asked if she was sure that I wasn't trying to carry chairs or something.  

When I was 4, I was diagnosed with scoliosis.  Again, I remember the early questions but I don't know if they were directed toward me or just overheard as someone asked my Mom.  "Is it from poor posture?"  Then later as a teen when I had to wear a Milwaukee brace and hated it desperately, one of my Mom's friends suggested that I should visualize my spine straight and refuse to see it, even in my mind, as curved and then it would straighten and I wouldn't have scoliosis anymore.  

As an adult, an acquaintance told me that she had been researching Marfan Syndrome and believed it was caused by low copper and if I would just buy the supplement she sold that I could probably eradicate my syndrome.  

In my Christian circles, lots of people brought faith in.  "You just need to have more faith."  "It's not going to happen if you don't believe that God can heal you...you DO believe God can heal you, right?"  "You're putting too much faith in medicine, that's why you're not being healed; you trust what your doctors say rather than just believing God."  And I think the most damaging were those who believe that all illness is tied to some sin.  A friend, and don't misunderstand me--this is a wonderful Christian woman who acted out of love and concern for me--gave me a book that she thought would help me.  It was a book that linked specific illnesses to specific un-confessed sins.  

So over and over, starting from a very early age, I swallowed this message that somehow my health challenges were my fault.  Somehow there was something that I was doing, or not doing, that was bringing these constant challenges into my life.  The nurse side of me didn't buy it.  Logically it didn't make sense based on what I knew about my syndrome.  And the friend of Christ side of me didn't really buy it either, it just didn't line up with John 9 where Jesus says that the man wasn't blind because of sin but so the works of God could be displayed in him.  But even as I didn't buy it there was this small voice in my head that whispered that it was my fault.  That if I could just figure out how to do the right things; the right diet, the right activity, the right faith, the right prayers, the right attitude...that somehow I could fix this and not struggle so much with my health.  I willingly embraced the responsibility for my health.  I owned it.  

Get set....

After we finished our adoption classes the next steps in our journey toward baby number 2 would be interviews with the social workers, a home-study, creating a video for birthparents that told about our home, and creating a profile. All in all, we felt scrutinized. Our adoption workers repeatedly assured our group of hopeful parents that we really weren't being scrutinized, that we really didn't need to be nervous. Every hope and every dream we had about having a 2nd baby seemed to rest on the approval of these two adoption workers we had just met, how could we not be nervous? Our desire for another baby was so strong, however that we finished our paperwork and plunged in. Plunged in and waited, and waited, and waited. We had been through so many classes but no one had prepared me for the feelings of rejection; that each month as other couples were chosen by birthparents and we weren't felt like a personal rejection. We knew we were expecting a baby, but there was no baby bump, no stories of morning sickness or contractions, no birth plans, no expected date, no guarantee even that it would really happen. Through the years people have made comments about adoption being the "easy way." Trust me, I've done both, adoption was way harder.

About 9 months in, our adoption worker called about a child who was already 9 or 10 months old, Rick and I prayed and just heard "no" so I called her back and told her this wasn't the child for us. It felt horrible. I felt like I was passing up on the chance to have our child. We had to stand on faith that God would bring us the right baby at the right time but it was so hard. A couple of weeks later our adoption worker called again and said there was a young birth mom who was deciding between us and another couple in our group. She wanted to meet us and the other couple. The other couple were friends from our class so we talked with them and both asserted that either way she chose it would be win/win. We would be happy for each other and no hard feelings. We met her at the CCS office and after our meeting our friends had theirs with her. I talked to my friend later and just from her description of the meeting they had I knew a big connection had been made. It wasn't a huge surprise when our adoption worker let us know a few days later that the birthmom had chosen our friends. We cried and prayed and cried some more. And then we waited again.

The one thing I could do that made me feel like we were having a baby was sew baby clothes. So I made the whole crib set, bumpers, blanket, bed skirt, and I made sleepers, rompers, layette gowns, overalls. I filled drawers with baby clothes. And still we waited.

There have been many times in my life when I feel like God has forgotten me in this "waiting room." I feel like I'm sitting alone waiting for something I've prayed for but I'm not entirely sure he will provide. I usually am sure when I first pray but the longer I wait the more I doubt. What I've learned is that I'm not alone, God is there with me to comfort me and provide my strength as I wait. I don't understand why he doesn't just answer prayers right away. I understand that he sometimes says "yes" and he sometimes says "no." I get that. I have a harder time with the "not yet." I want to know why he's making me wait and letting me know that doesn't seem high on his priority list. I've also learned that he's okay with all of my emotions as I wait. His desire is relationship with me, and with you. And sometimes the biggest relationship growth happens as you sit together in the waiting room.