Month: January 2023

I felt prompted to write this after a conversation with one of my best friends who also struggles with chronic health issues. She said to me, “It is so hard to see people being healed and not have it be me.” This is something I do struggle with from time to time but I want to share what has helped me with it. I think what is so hard is that in the Bible when people were healed he often said, “Your faith has healed you.” I have questioned myself many times if the reason I’m not healed is because I do not have enough faith. It can be very confusing when you feel like you weren’t picked when you feel like you should have been. An example I like to use is when Jesus was on earth many would gather in lines to be healed. As you can imagine almost everyone around would come with their sickness but because of the amount there was Jesus did not heal everyone there. I think it is easy to dwell on all who were healed in the Bible and forget about all those who weren’t. It was not because there wasn’t enough time but because Jesus knew it wasn’t their time yet. I’ve had many pray healing over me and I have complete faith God could heal me but he has also made it extremely clear to me that my time of healing is not now. Yes I do pray for healing every day and I do hope for it, but it doesn’t consume my life. I can have such a beautiful life even without that moment of healing on earth because I know I have a beautiful and perfect body awaiting me in heaven. God is so worth of my praise even in the toughest of times. He is worth the pain I have to experience on this earth because he endured much on earth as well.

-𝓜𝓪𝓬𝔂

I know one of the challenges I have face is feeling like I am not enough or doing enough for God when I can’t do certain things. A question I have really wrested with recently is, why would God take away my ability to do things that benefit or glorify him? Why would God make me so weak in front of so many people? I have always been someone who wants to look strong to all those around me. I always wanted to be able to do everything myself without anyone’s help. I have now been exposed in my weakness to so many people and that has taken away my pride. And while many would see this as a loss see this as a win in my spiritual journey. God never intended us to think we could do this life on our own. This new spiritual attitude has helped me to be so much more real with people and honest about where my strength comes from. While many of us would admit our strength comes from God, we don’t credit God for things we feel we’ve accomplished on our own. And when he takes that away it is a good reminder that without him we are nothing. And this isn’t something I have achieved I still struggle with it a lot because it goes so against our human nature. But I have prayed that through my weakness that God would not only grow me but that he would also help me to encourage others to feel enough for God when they aren’t able to do what many around us can. All God asks us to do is glorify him so if that looks like you praying to him from a bed, that is enough for him.
-𝓜𝓪𝓬𝔂

We can so easily get caught up in what we wanted, what we had planned. For me this year was going to be the first year in 5 years that would be somewhat normal for me. The doctors thought they had found a treatment that would get me to where I always wanted to be. They promised me a complete recovery and without realizing it that became everything to me. In September my world was shaken as everything I had planned was now far from what would be. Going from working out everyday and spending all my extra time working and hanging out with friends, to laying in a bed for months, it wasn’t exactly what I would have personally chosen. If I would have written my story I would have never suffered with chronic illness, I would have never put myself in bed for months while a lot of my life slipped away. But this is how God wrote it and I trust that somehow this is a much better way. We want control, being a complete control freak myself I do not like the feeling of loosing control. Not that we ever have it but when things go our way we feel like we have some control. Looking back and looking to the present I have seen so much growth in my own life. I have grown in my boldness with sharing the gospel, I have grown in my love for the Bible and prayer, and I have grown in how I react to hard situations. Even when life is not what we wanted, we can trust that God is going to work through us and around us.

-𝓜𝓪𝓬𝔂

I think I can speak for most people who struggle with chronic illness when I say that the mental state it brings you into is the worst part. I can handle constant pain in my body, but when my mind fails me I struggle the most. In the past when life would start to get hard I would loose control of my mind and I would face constant attacks on what I knew to be true. I would constantly hear, “How is God all he says he is if he is putting you through this.” I would be faced with great doubt which would cause me to distance from God sometimes without me realizing it. Overtime my heart started believing what my mind was telling me and I lost sight of who God was. I didn’t know what I believed in anymore because who I wanted God to be was not aligning with my own situation. Once I realized what was happening to my once strong faith, I spent countless hours studying the Bible and writing out in a journal about who I knew God to be to prepare for the attacks.

I remember six months ago when my flare up started and I was in the hospital laying in the bed thinking, if my mind is overtaken again I do not think I will be able to make it through. I had always prayed for physical healing for myself but at that time I instead prayed that God would protect my mind from words of the devil. As I felt the pain worsen over the next months I dealt with fear of my mental state worsening. While I have days where my mind deals with doubts and anxiety, overall God has answered my prayer for the protection over my mind. And I encourage you to pray this prayer over your own mind as well! 
-𝓜𝓪𝓬𝔂

Spirit filled worship is not only for crowded rooms and buildings. God has been testing me recently to continue to worship him even when I can’t make it to worship nights or to church in person. He has tested the depth of my worship with him even when no one is watching. I now have the most spirit filled worship in my room every night as I listen to my worship music through my speaker. Just because some nights i’m not able to stand, I  can still raise my hands and kneel before God. I find myself very emotional when God makes his presence known through worship in a crowd or in my room alone. Not only is God in our hearts, HE IS IN THIS ROOM! 
-𝓜𝓪𝓬𝔂