I can feel my strength getting weaker. My heart getting heavier. Every day is getting harder. I’m having to use a cane now to help with my balance and lightheadedness. There is so much breaking my heart from my illness and physical pain and the impact this illness has had on relationships.
Life’s just hard. I’m trying to take it day by day, but that sometimes turns to hour by hour. The ground is feeling more unsteady with every step forward.
Sometimes I feel so shaken and fragile as each day brings me closer to the brain surgery. I’m feeling so weary and tired. I wish all of this was already behind me.
(Here’s an inside look into how my prayer goes sometimes)
I was praying earlier about my struggle and questioned why this was happening to me again. Why does it feel worse than before? I asked God to give me the strength I don’t have and to carry me now because I’m too tired. I told God I felt like I was only hanging on by a thread. That there’s no way out for me.
I thought about that phrase “hanging by a thread” for a second and began to imagine a thread and the image in my head took on the old hem of a tattered robe.
The woman in the Bible who bled for 12 years and touched the robe of Jesus was my first thought.
Honestly, that story has become a hard one for me to hear and read. There has been some unintentional misuse of that story towards me. I had someone I know compare me to the woman. They told me that if I just had more faith and decided to reach out and touch Jesus’ robe, I would be healed.
These last few years, I have had many people tell me things like that. If I just had more faith, prayed more, or confessed my sin I would be healed. Someone even asked me what my parent’s unconfessed sin was.
I slowly began to realize I felt like the woman who was isolated from her community and church. She was known for her illness. It’s been really hard and I struggle sometimes to be in church or with a group of believers. I feel insecure and tainted somehow. I feel like everyone knows my prayers haven’t been answered and I’m marked. I know this is irrational thinking, but the insecurity, feeling different from my peers, and not having a “normal” young adult life
It is easy for me in the moment when these things are being said to brush it off, but with my insomnia and the fatigue at night, the lies begin to distort the truth.
I lie awake and wonder why has God not answered my prayers. Did I do something wrong? Am I not enough as I am?
I read a book by Costi Hinn called, More Than a Healer. I loved how he described that way of thinking. This is my summary, but he describes that way of thinking as making God’s love transactional. That we have to do or say the right things for Him to bless and take care of us.
The one thing above all I have learned from this experience is my faith is not built on anything other than the tender mercies and love of Jesus. We are not promised a life free of worries and pain, but we are promised the unconditional, never-ending love of God that surpasses all understanding.
I find myself avoiding the story of the woman who touched the robe of Jesus because it would make me feel angry and confused about why healing hasn’t come for me. I don’t know and I may never know. Full healing may never come for me on this side of heaven, but I know it will come. I have a promise of a future with a new body and no more pain. A place with no more tears and heartbreak.
When I was praying about having on by a thread and then thought of the woman and the robe, this time I thought of Jesus’ robe tattered and worn with threads hanging off the bottom. He was described as a man of sorrow. He carried the sorrows of the world. My sorrows.
I realized that yes, I am hanging on by a thread. The thread of the robe. The robe of the one who will lead me to life everlasting.
The Book of Job is one of my favorite books of the Bible. One of my favorite passages of scripture is after all of Job’s questioning and debating, God answers him through a whirlwind. He asks Job a series of questions showing the full awesome power of God and the smallness of man. In God’s love, he restores Job’s life. Job ends by saying,
“I have heard of You before, but now I have seen You with my own eyes.”
Thank you for all your prayers and support,
God Bless, Shae
Weathering Chiari 