Healing.

I have to admit that many years passed with me wondering why God hadn’t chosen to heal me. I knew He was capable of it and that if He wanted to, He could just speak and all my pain and suffering would be gone. More than anything, I just wanted to be HEALED and I couldn’t understand why God wouldn’t want that for me also. It wasn’t until this past year that I realized that God DID answer my prayer – just not in the earthly way I had anticipated.

To heal is defined as to make healthy, whole or sound; restore to health; free from ailment.  The bible is filled with many stories of miraculous healings – all ones I clung to in my desperate state of wanting to be “normal” again.  But, as with many things, God began to ever so gently reveal to me that I was looking at things from the wrong angle (I never was very good at Geometry). God loved me too much to return me to how I was, before using this storm to change me – REALLY change me – into who I was created to be.  Does God want me to suffer?  No.  Is God the one making me suffer?  No.  But God loves me too much to let all this go in vain.  He is using all this pain and suffering and He is molding me into something beautiful to be used for His glory.  Think of that for a moment… we are each being molded by our situations for a purpose – for a HIGHER purpose.  Whether your marriage is suffering right now, or your finances, your family is in turmoil, your children are rebelling, your health is failing….  God will use that – to ultimately heal you.

You see, as I was praying for God to heal my body, I completely missed that God was trying to heal me in HIS way.  I didn’t realize that there was another form of healing – another form that would completely alter the way I saw this whole process. To heal is ALSO defined as to free from evil; cleanse; purify; to heal the soul.  God WAS healing me, yes.  He was healing my heart.  He answered my prayer. Lord my God, I called to you for help, and you healed me.  Psalm 30:2.  It just took me a while to see it…

One of the ways God healed me was He healed me from my warped view of heaven.  Before I got sick, I was pretty comfortable here on earth.  Life was good – I was a new Christian who had just started on this beautiful journey of knowing my Savior!  I had just married a wonderful, godly man 2 months prior and I had two beautiful children.  Life was great!  But life was almost too great to grasp and immensely anticipate heaven. It’s not until life starts becoming ugly and raw that we can really grasp the true beauty of this PROMISE: He will wipe every tear from their eyes.  There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.  Revelation 21:4  For someone in pain every day, for those who are suffering and shedding tears of agony… those are the people who are TRULY being healed of their earthly view of heaven.  When this world is far from comfortable and this earth feels like itchy, scratchy fabric on our tender skin everyday, we cling so tightly to that PROMISE.  Only then can we try to imagine the joy heaven will truly bring (as much as our narrow minds can imagine such immaculate glory, that is).  No pain, no suffering… the excitement looking forward to that is completely unimaginable to the old “normal” me. Ever so slowly I was being healed…

The hardest lesson I have had to learn is that I cannot do any of this on my own.  My ever patient Lord – He is still trying to work this out of me.  I am one stubborn girl when it comes to this!  Just when I think I am relying on His strength and not my own, life throws me a curve ball, and just like that I revert back to my old ways… I panic, I retreat inward, I wear myself out trying to do everything I can to make the situation better. My poor husband is having some pretty intense back issues right now, which has thrown us all for a loop.  I would love to have told you that I upped my scripture reading to rely on Him more, that I asked for help so I wouldn’t wear myself out, got more sleep to counter the extra duties around the house, and kept a good communication with my husband about how I was feeling through all this.  Yeah… nope.  It looked more like this… me running around like a chicken with my head cut off, while not sleeping because I was so stressed because I didn’t know how on EARTH I was going to get it all done, shutting my husband out because I didn’t want him to feel bad about how stressed I was… all while sobbing uncontrollably.  It wasn’t until I threw up a half-hearted prayer, about how I couldn’t do this and how I couldn’t possibly do that when I heard my Lord’s sweet voice, “My love, I heard an awful lot of ‘I’s.  Why is it that after all this time, you still think you are in this alone?  Have I ever left your side?  EVER?  Dear, you were never meant to carry this burden – why are you choosing to pick this up? Alone no doubt…?  Why are you pushing me away?  Let me take this burden off your shoulders.  Remember when I asked you to write about healing?  This is part of it – sometimes to heal you have to let go and rely on Me.”  So, I did and I can tell you that each day is easier to handle when we really rely on our God instead of ourselves.  He never lets us down and he heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.  Psalm 147:3.  He longs to heal our hearts, our outlooks, our dependence on Him.  But, we have to be willing to allow Him to.  Are you willing?  I promise you, if healing is what you are seeking, you will find it.  It could be ever so slowly but it will be ever so life changing.

Heal me, Lord, and I will be healed; save me and I will be saved, for you are the one I praise. Jeremiah 17:14

I no longer pray for physical healing from my chronic illnesses.  I do pray for daily pain management and for strength to get through each daily trial they bring.  Some of you may not agree with that, but let me ask you this: Why would I pray for God to take away something that He is using in such a powerful way?  When He is teaching me so much on a daily basis, why pray for that plug to get pulled?  If it is God’s will to heal me and teach me new things through new circumstances, then I gladly welcome the new endeavor!  But for now, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.  Phillippians 3:14

-Jodi