When I am sick
I struggle with faith when I am sick.
I know that the challenging times are when we grow the most, increase our faith the most and develop our character the most. I experienced this through a chronic long term illness.
I have a history of illness. I was diagnosed with M.E. aka. CFS (Chronic Fatigue Syndrome) many years ago. It was triggered when I had a head injury rapidly followed by glandular fever. At the time I was avoiding God, church and faith because I had decided that the rules of Christianity were too hard.
Over a few years with CFS. I came back to God and church. Life was getting so hard that I needed him more than I wanted to do my own thing. Through this time I did a lot of reading and my faith grew. I started to pray and connect with God deeply. But the CFS remained.
The church members were great to start with, but as I stubbornly refused to be healed some started to question me. As though I was staying sick on purpose just to annoy them.
I think that when their best prayer efforts didn't produce results, their faith felt under attack and it hurt them. It began to be hard to go to church. Some people gave me advice, and seemed offended when none of it worked. Some even began to monitor my behaviour and words, trying to find a reason the healing wasn’t happening.
I got the sense that if I was persistently and stubbornly going to remain ill then some thought that maybe I wasn’t doing something right or I wasn’t right with God. I am sure they didn’t mean it to sound that way but it was horrible. It did make me doubt my own faith, my own right standing with God. During all this my faith was challenged and grew and was challenged again. But I decided that I could be as stubborn as the illness. I would keep asking God for help and it was his problem if it worked or not (I couldn't fix myself - I had certainly tried). My responsibility was to ask. His was to do the work.
One day (after more than 5 years with CFS) I was getting prayer and I felt something. I wasn't sure what, so in my mind I said "God, am I still sick?" and he said "Nope". And that was that. The all-over ache went away and when I slept I started to wake up feeling refreshed. I still had to be careful not to overdo it, but I could start looking for work, start feeling human again.
After that I want to say that life was easy and everything went well. But it didn't. I had a persistent growth that required repeated surgery on my back and for several years I was sick and exhausted. But the CFS itself never came back. I still seem to catch every virus or sickness going around and take a bit longer to recover than other people but I have a full time job and a normal life now, something I once thought was impossible.
But when I get sick, the echoes of my past start to ring in my ears, I start to panic that I am going to lose my life, my job and my enthusiasm. You would think that after a miraculous healing from God that a little illness like a head cold would be nothing to me. But it brings back emotional echoes of the past and scares me.
That’s my challenge now, to keep fighting against the fear, to keep trusting God and remembering that it is his responsibility to heal me, not mine. All my worry and stressing will only make things worse.
I find it is hard to hold onto God and fear at the same time. So today I am choosing to keep holding on to my faith even when my fear seems bigger.
KG
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