Giving it to God, part 4

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

Around the same time that I was learning to focus on my blessings instead of the negatives, I also found a new neurologist who specialized in headaches.  He was able to see that I was having 3 different kinds of headaches and found a medication that actually gave me headache free days instead of headache free hours.  It has fewer side effects too.  All in all I was feeling better, exercising regularly, things were looking up.  Best of all my anger at God was gone and I was again growing in relationship with him.  I had a few months of things going really well.  My echo-cardiogram was good so my cardiologist said we could skip my yearly MRI, we went on vacation and got to see family, and I went to my first National Marfan Foundation Conference.   After hearing again the risks and the necessity for monitoring at the conference, I called my cardiologist and requested that we do the MRI.  My headaches also started ramping up again and I noticed that my endurance as I exercised wasn't as good as it had been a few months before.  I thought that the many hours in the car had been too much and I just needed some recovery time.  

I was so anxious as my MRI came closer.  I normally have some anxiety, but they are routine so I don't know why it seemed worse this time.  As they did the test I knew they had found something because they took more time than usual and injected the contrast an extra time.  The results did show a pleural effusion and the radiologist wondered if one of the cysts from my Dural Ectasia had formed a fistula with the pleural space and that's what was contributing to the fluid around the lung.   At this point, it's all speculation based on impressions from the MRI.  I'm not happy that another health challenge has cropped up.  I have referrals to 3 specialists and I'm not looking forward to another season of doctor visits and tests.  I sent an email to family to ask for prayer and I've obviously been praying a lot about it myself.  At first I was filled with anxiety and my anxiety was causing me to not listen very well to God.  I couldn't hear his assurances that he was taking care of me.  Instead I was frustrated and trying desperately not to get angry again.  I was overwhelmed with the thought of a season of poor health; it was made worse by the memory of how far from God I felt when I was so angry.  

I received a text message from my brother after asking for prayer telling me that God had revealed to him that I haven't given my health issues to God, that I still try to control things.  And you know what?  It's true.  That was from God.  I see it in my anxiety. I see it in my need to do everything I can to take care of my body.  I see it in my diet.  I see it in my exercise plan.  None of those things are bad, but it's the heart behind it.  It's the desire to control and do everything right so that things will go well. With that comes frustration when things don't go well because I have done everything right!  God had said the same thing to me earlier in the week--that I needed to just relinquish all of it to him.  I obviously hadn't listened since he told my brother.  The thing is, I love how God works.  If anyone else had said it to me it probably would have made me mad.  But when my brother told me--because of who he is in Christ, because of his humility and his love for me--I wasn't angry I just instantly thought, "Ah, he's right."   I love that God knows our relationship so well that he knew who I would receive the message from.  

So now, here is my dilemma.  I want to surrender this completely to God.  But I don't know how.  I don't know how you balance surrender with appropriate concern and responsibility.  It wouldn't honor God if I just stopped getting medical care, stopped taking care of myself.  I need to use my discernment to know when an issue needs follow up and when I can let it go.  But I want to let it stop with that rather than going beyond that to taking control and responsibility on my own.  I am praying and I know that God will show me how to give this to him, even if I have to do it daily for a while.  

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.  

Just go with the flow

I have been struggling lately. Is that too honest? That's why I haven't blogged in over a month. Some new health challenges cropped up and it really pushed me to a point of profound discouragement and anger. In the middle of this, my family needed to use a groupon certificate that my husband had bought for ocean kayaking before it expired. We've never been ocean kayaking before and I was a little nervous. When I added in my current state of health and my weakness...I was even more nervous. So we set out, I was sharing a kayak with Rick and before we even made it through the waves he leaned wrong and dumped us. Our friends and kids were all out past the surf, we had to continue but I just wanted to turn around and go back. My anxiety was now really high as we tried to climb back in among the waves. We got ourselves situated and headed out to join our group. But we faced the challenge of coordinating our strokes and for whatever reason we couldn't seem to get that unity down. We also faced the ocean current and we spent most of our time fighting against the current, trying to get the kayak to go the way that we wanted it to go, fearing that we were going to be swept in the wrong direction. Every now and then we would look up and see the amazing coastline of La Jolla, or we would watch as our kids seemed to effortlessly glide in their kayaks with friends. We made it back in, relatively unscathed but sore and tired and not entirely sure that this was an experience we enjoyed or would want to repeat.

As I reflected and prayed later I realized that my experience kayaking was a lot like my life.

First of all, I had little real control in the water. I couldn't control the waves, I couldn't control what Rick was doing, I couldn't control the current or the sea lions or anything else that might decide to swim near me. But I fought to be in control. How much easier would kayaking have been, how much easier would my life be if I decided just to accept what I couldn't control.

Secondly, when I let fear and anxiety rule the unity I need to have with my family flies away. Rick and I couldn't get coordinated in our strokes. I was focusing on what he was doing and trying to match it all while sitting in front of him where I couldn't actually see him. That combined with my own innate lack of coordination made it a little difficult for him to try and match my strokes so that we were in sync.

Third, and this is the one that I really felt like God wanted to show me, I can't fight the current. When I fought the current I ended up frustrated and exhausted. I didn't change the current--it continued to flow in the direction it was going to flow in. And fighting it and fearing it made me stiff, it caused me to miss looking up and seeing the beauty all around me. I was so intent on fighting the direction that things were going that I missed the fun of the experience and I missed the scenery.

I have been fighting the current of my life lately. My health issues are big. I have major things wrong with my body. That's the current. And fighting it means that I'm trying to fix the problems in my body and most of them are things that actually can't be fixed. They're caused by a genetic defect that science can't correct yet. So when I fight that current I end up just like I did in the ocean, exhausted, frustrated, full of anxiety and missing a ton of beauty and fun. When I was in my kayak and we went with the current it was a completely different experience. We made progress, we were in sync and it was so much easier. And that's the key learning for my life. The ocean didn't change. The current didn't change, but learning to paddle in a way that used the current and relaxing enough to enjoy going in the direction the current was taking us made for a better experience.

I don't want to miss the beauty and the blessing that God has provided in my life because I'm fighting a current I can't change. It's not giving up when I decide to stop fighting. Sometimes it's just learning to paddle with the current so that the force of the thing that used to drain me now becomes a force that is providing some unique experiences. I guess going kayaking was a good thing after all.


John 10:10 (Amplified Bible) The thief comes only in order to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have and enjoy life, and have it in abundance (to the full, till it [a]overflows).