Faith and Healing

I believe that God is a God of healing. I believe He is wondrously committed to the well-being and thriving of his children. I believe that He hears our cries and responds. I also believe that He responds in all kinds of ways, and that, as the Bible says, those ways are higher than our ways. I think that means, at least in part, that what He gives us in response to the cries of our souls is often something more splendid, more satisfying, more all-encompassing, and more glorifying to Him than we had imagined. He sees more than us and weaves something fabulous for our good.

But since that's different than what we can imagine, that also means that the gifts can be confusing, at least at first.

My wife and I have prayed for a long time that I'd be healed. We've done this in in times of private prayer, and together as we lay in bed. We've prayed in small groups on a weekly basis. We've asked for and had prayers offered by family and friends.  We've gone up after church and to altar calls when it's impressed upon us that we need to ask.

And despite all that, it'd be hard to say I'm much better. If anything, it seems it's the various life changes over the years that have made this disease bearable.

And that's kind of the point I want to make. God hasn't said "yes" to healing me. I am in no way saying that He never will, but so far the God who loves me and my wife more radically than we can understand, and who has heard every cry we've ever uttered, and captured every tear in his bottle, has not yet decided that healing was the answer to our moments of need.

There have been moments of real desperation. Working a demanding, fast-paced, and ambiguous job at Amazon, there were times where it felt almost certain that I'd lose that job, and our lives would have to look very different. I cried out time and time again, anguished because it felt like the collapse of everything was just around the corner. But grace after grace was lavished on me so that that never happened. 

Things did get very dark, and I was treated quite unjustly in that role, but not because of my health. The opportunities to do meaningful work in a supportive environment came to an end, and it made sense to move on. Despite all of my circumstances, God set me up so that I could leave on my terms, not desperately or in disgrace.

And out of that came the opportunity to to leave to go to ServiceNow. Now, more than ever, I've been given grace in the form of flexibility. My work molds itself around my illness in ways that are unendingly flabbergasting to me. Ask my wife; there have been an uncountable number of times where I recap my day or week at work, and it's just a story about how a big project I thought was coming fizzled out just in time for a couple-of-day spell of debilitating fatigue and brain fog, or a presentation I was supposed to give was canceled last-minute by someone else just as I was realizing how sick I was.

Now, clearly this is a symptom of a work environment that isn't very predictable and so I sometimes sound like I'm complaining about the constant uncertainty, but mostly I'm just baffled. This isn't the way life is supposed to work. It's supposed to be unforgiving and punishing, and you're supposed to be constantly clawing and scrambling to keep the pieces from coming apart. What's going on?

And for all that grace, I still struggle. I struggle with how magical it all is, and how none of it relies on me. I want to live a life that is defined by my strengths, not my weaknesses. I want a life that's predictable and on my terms. 

I am a leaf carried along white foam rapids. At least, that's what the fear tells me. In reality, I'm a leaf nudged gently along a serene stream in a green vale. I am in no danger, and am thoroughly cared for. The catch is that I don't get to steer.

And that takes me back to my first point. I believe God is a God of healing. 

He's healing my fear. 

I've been wondering lately why God hasn't healed me physically. I've been concerned that there was something wrong with my faith, and that if I believed with all my might that God would heal me physically, then He would. Honestly, I still think that's true. But when I scrutinize that idea more closely I realize that, if I never fully believe that God is going to heal me, might that not be because the Spirit of God in me knows that the answer to my true need isn't physical healing? He has answered each true need I've ever had, provided for us perfectly and faithfully, and He's done that without healing my body. 

But that's such a deeply personal journey, you know? It's taken place over the course of 5+ years with more occasions of sobbing on my wife's shoulder than I can count, and innumerable days where it felt like physical healing was the only way out. There's a reason that I'm not standing here prescribing a method to get healed. Despite what I said earlier, this isn't really magic. This is life, and life hurts. 

I'm also saying these things to you in a moment of clarity. Things can shift and destabilize such that I lose this semi-confident understanding of God's purposes. However, my real confidence can't be shaken, because it's based on the faithfulness of God, and He's just spent years proving to me how trustworthy He is. And thankfully He's given us His word to orient ourselves around when it feels like we are the leaf in the white foam rapids, so that we can say with David "I believe I will look upon the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living."

I'm not here to tell you what to do, I'm just here to tell you a story. And it's my story, not yours. Just don't beat yourself up, okay? God loves you. He knows your heart, and what you're going through. He's with you, and He's working things together for your good. Just know that. Be still, and know that He is God.