Peace

June 8, 2020

I’ve grappled with where God is in my illness since the beginning. The night before my brain surgery the elders of my church and their families gathered together, anointed me in oil, laid hands on me, and prayed. It’s hard to keep still when you’ve got 30+ people trying to lay hands on your back, shoulders, arms, knees, head, hands, and they’re praying for 30+ minutes. Afterward, I walked up to the senior pastor and fighting tears asked only one question, “Is God punishing me?”

He quickly and adamantly reassured me that no, God’s not punishing me with brain surgery. Instead, he flipped open his Bible to the gospels and found the time Christ healed a man born blind and the disciples asked what sin was committed, that of his or his parents that he was made blind. Jesus responded that no sin was committed, he was born blind so that the glory of God could be shown through him. The pastor assured me the same was true for me, gave me a comforting side hug, and snagged me a tissue before the next person came up to talk to me.

Two weeks later when I was writhing in inescapable, incredible agony from the chemical meningitis on my brain, I couldn’t see how this level of pain was anything other than God’s punishment. In-between screams of pain I inventoried every sin I could remember and profusely apologized to God. I begged and pleaded for God’s forgiveness if only he could stop this. Stop this pain, stop this punishment. After four hours of pain only expressed through literal screams, I fell asleep hoping God wouldn’t inflict that again. My mom slept in the bed beside me, my dad on the floor beside my bed. We called the doctors and they told me I was just not tolerating the pain of recovery well. He prescribed more medication.  

Three days later when it happened again, my brother left the house because my screams were so disturbing. The only thing that convinced me to go to the hospital was seeing my mom in tears over my pain and my dad holding her while fighting back his own. It’s an image that still haunts me.

At the ER I was given “hospital heroin” to “shut that screaming girl up.” I was transferred to a larger hospital better able to care for me, and once we finally did imaging and had a reason for this pain, the doctors told me I shouldn’t have lived that long with this chemical meningitis on my brain the way it was. I was sedated and kept that way for four days while they watched and prepared to drill a hole in my head to drain fluid.  

But it never happened, miraculously, inexplicably, I was healed. Four days as my parents alternated caring for me, people prayed, so many people prayed, and I was healed. I woke up from the sedation, alive and well, and asked for Dairy Queen. My dad brought me almost one of everything on the dessert menu.

A week after I was released from this hospital stay I was out to lunch with my family. It was my first outing, and I was running on the high of still being alive. I was in a store with my mom looking for hats to cover my now shaved back of my head when I went to sit down. I sat down and just started crying. My mom called my dad who brought the car around and picked me up. I told my mom to keep shopping, that I’d be okay. I kept crying and my dad thought it was from pain. As we were driving home I quietly asked, “Dad, does God still love me?”

My dad looked over, changed lanes, and took us to Ms. Joan’s house.

Ms. Joan lost her husband of over 40 years on the day after I had brain surgery. I hadn’t gotten to see her yet. She’s a devoted woman of God and incredibly wise. She kindly welcomed us into her home on this surprise visit and I tearfully asked the same question. Does God still love me? Because I surely don’t feel loved.

She went into an explanation that I don’t feel loved because I don’t trust I’m loved because I don’t know I’m loved. She told me that in order to feel God, I need to trust God, and to trust God, I need to know God. Before this point, I didn’t read my Bible daily, I didn’t do anything really beyond go to church whenever there was something going on and I was really active in church, for sure. I’m a pastor’s kid for goodness sakes, I’ve got a reputation to uphold.

But she was right. I didn’t know God. I didn’t know God’s character for myself.  

So I dove into scripture. And fell back out. For the next year and a half, I was haphazardly in the Bible and sort of pursuing God. I fell back and forth into and out of health issues and always sought God during that time, but didn’t when I was well.

In June of 2016, after yet another surgery to remove a rib followed by more complications, while I was running a summer speech and debate camp for the University of Alabama I finally resolved, “God, give me a desire to read your word.” I gave myself a total of seven days to not read my Bible between now and June of 2017, because no one’s perfect, but other than that, we were going to finally dive into it. Almost two years after brain surgery.

Day by day I got my Bible and a journal and started trying to get to know God and His character. I rarely felt it, rarely wanted to, and always went ahead, for the discipline of it.

And it worked. In the four years since then, I’ve read through the entire Bible five times, I’ve not missed more than one week of reading my Bible each year, and I’ve learned how to journal. My journals from those first days look timid and unsure and it would take me six months to go through one, and now they’re confident and at ease, and I cycle through a new journal every two months or so. I’ve learned and continue to learn the character of God and I’ve changed. God’s changed my heart through his word. 

I no longer see brain surgery as punishment. I understand why I thought that, though.

All of my health issues, as rare and abnormal as they are, have been part of my body since birth or tied to something that has been part of my body since birth. They can point to the exact trimester that my skull malformed. They can point to the time where the enzyme that would break down b12 in food didn’t form. I’ve got a roadmap to where I should have formed normally and the route showing where I didn’t, and it’s not anyone’s fault, my mom had great prenatal care and was incredibly careful with me.

But God was there. It says in Psalm and in Job that God knit me together in my mother’s womb, that he threaded together my bones and sinews. God created me knowing the day I’d need brain surgery because of the way he formed my skull. He knew the day my legs would stop working because he didn’t allow the enzyme to develop. He made my adrenal gland knowing the day I’d learn of the tumor that would form on it. It says in Isaiah that nothing happens that God neither causes nor allows.

If I trust the scriptures, God always had the medical issues to be part of my body and my life. He could have miraculously healed me so that I wouldn’t have had to have brain surgery in the first place, but he didn’t. He allowed me to experience unspeakable pain, again and again and again. And He loves me.

The verse that every single person quoted to me was Romans 8:28, “And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them.” If someone is going through something rough, don’t quote this to them unless you have a personal relationship with them and they ask you why this is happening. And even then, don’t quote it, sit in silence with them, hold their hand, or just say, “I’m sorry it is. I don’t know why, but I do know that I’m here for you.” Don’t quote this verse as a throwaway comfort, because it causes more anger than anything else.

It caused me anger because it is true! God caused and allowed all of these medical issues in me because it was for my good and for God’s glory. I can’t count the blessings that have come out of this immense physical and emotional pain. I can’t! I have the life I have now because of brain surgery. And God planned it that way. I’m not a step off of God’s plan and purpose for my life and he had known it would go this way because of the medical issues he planted in me as I grew.

I’m glad to know that now, but it’s a process. God didn’t get me from “Is God punishing me” to “Alright God, for my good and for Your glory, I’ll take it, just walk it with me” overnight! It took years of crying to God, wrestling with God, disagreeing with God, listening to God, learning from God, submitting to God. God and I rarely agree on what “for my good” means. I often don’t like how “for my good’ manifests, but I trust that in the bigger picture of what I can’t see, of the part of eternity God’s preparing me for, I’ll look back and see that “for my good” was exactly what God had for me.

I also can’t capture how many ways God was able to use me and my family to bless others because of our experience with my medical issues. More than once my dad paid someone’s co-pay when they couldn’t afford to pay it and couldn’t afford not to be seen by the doctor and he was in a position to respond to the Holy Spirit’s prompting to pay it. So many times I’ve been connected with someone going through the same medical issues I did and was able to share in that pain with them, to give them tips and tricks to navigate it, and to just say, “I see you and I hear you and I’m sorry.” It goes on and on and it is beautiful.

I’m going to guess that more than likely; my medical stuff isn’t over. Who knows how much rarer and wild it will get. And that’s okay. I trust that God’s ways are higher than my ways and that when I’m upset or angry or hurting God will sit in it with me, hold my hand, let me rest. It’s all a process and God’s given me a relationship with Him through it all, a confidence in Him. I can point to times that God’s used me to show his glory, just like I was first told on the night before my brain surgery, I do believe God was talking to me through the pastor. I still think there are more opportunities for God’s glory to be shown through my story and I know it’s going to come with a lot of pain and heartbreak for me, but I know it’s okay too.

But it’s not just a process for me. It’s a process for those around me too. I’m a pastor’s kid of a small/medium sized church in the Bible Belt. My parents and I got a lot of input on the spiritual aspect of what’s going on with me from many, many people both in our church and in other churches. The spiritual input was from people all over the map on their relational-standing with God and their familiarity of God’s text. Thankfully my parents didn’t let all of it through to me, but it was still often very hurtful to hear what people were saying to them and to me directly. People told me I was still sick because I had unresolved sin in my heart, because I didn’t pray enough, because I didn’t pray hard enough, because I didn’t trust God would heal me, because I was being punished for something, because I hadn’t really accepted Christ, the list goes on and on. I think the one that is now my favorite, but at the time left me the angriest was when someone told me I had a demon and that’s why I was sick. They were angry my parents wouldn’t let a group of strangers surround me, have me confess all of my sins to them, and then they would remove the demon.

I kept a blog during the first few years of my illness and I angrily wrote a blog post in response to all of this spiritual criticism entitled, “God might not heal me and that’s okay.” My dad reviewed it, nothing heretical in it, but it did cause a couple of people to leave the church and led several people to call my dad about my “misguided words.”

I know now in truth what I knew then in theory, that God does love me and that’s why he won’t heal me. That he did heal me in part with the chemical meningitis but not in whole with my brain surgery. Because God loves me he made me with a skull that twenty years later would need brain surgery.

It’s odd enough, but I’ve never asked, “why me.” I’ve innately known that from the beginning. I’m not the exception to life. God made his very own son’s purpose, the main purpose in his human life, to be crucified on a cross, to die for our sins. If God’s own son was made human to experience inexplicable pain and to die from it and God loved him so very much, why would God not allow me to experience inexplicable pain because he loves me too? God didn’t save his own son from suffering. God intentionally allowed him to be born for the purpose of suffering. In my suffering, I share in Christ’s suffering, I share in the blood of Christ, I share in bringing God glory and fulfilling the purpose he has for my life and though painful, that’s precious.  

God’s love is something I’ve resolved that I can’t understand. I think I understand love because I can love, but the dimensions of love I’m capable of aren’t the only dimensions of love that exist. If I get married, I’ll be introduced to a new dimension of love. If I adopt children, I’ll be introduced to another. But there are facets to love that I won’t know this side of heaven. There are parts of God’s love that I’ll only know when this world falls away, and many of those parts I’m guessing are the ones that allow me, cause me to suffer for my good and for God’s glory. Until I can understand that, I’ll trust God’s operating for these motives and I’ll take it on faith.

It isn’t against God’s character to create me with a body meant for pain and a life made for suffering. God causing these series of events isn’t antithetical to who He is. If I assume it is, then I’ll be angry, I’ll feel like God’s acting unjustly against me, and I’ll be resentful toward God. I’ll expect I’m entitled to something I’m not, a pain-free, harm-free, suffering-free life. But as I read the Bible and I see God’s character and I get to know God, I see how my pain and suffering fits into the larger narrative God is weaving. And it’s an honor to be part of that. I don’t have to find purpose in my pain, I just have to walk with God and He’ll reveal it, both this side of heaven and the next. When I’m in pain, I’ll turn to God for comfort. When I’m angry or upset this is part of my story, I’ll tell God that. When I’m glad I’m able to bless others because of it, I’ll thank God for it.

I didn’t get from punishment to glory on my own, I got there with God, with His word, with wise counsel surrounding me. Though I know this is true, there are days I definitely don’t feel it. And that’s okay. I know it’s true and I fall back on that knowledge. This is all Big T Trauma and even though I know this is all true, that doesn’t remove the impact this trauma had on me. I still experience the hurts of that trauma, and that’s okay too. I discover more about God and who God made me and the purpose he has for me when I do.

There are a million reasons why God doesn’t heal and why he does. There are even more reasons as to why one person is sick and why another person isn’t. Sure, God has used illness to discipline people in the Bible. He’s used illness to show His glory. Sometimes people are sick due to the consequences of their actions and sometimes due to the consequences of other’s actions. Sometimes it’s simply because we’re in a fallen and broken world and we’re not promised to be made healthy and whole until Heaven. Sometimes God allows us to remain sick so we’ll remain close to him, sometimes it’s because of the sanctification that He uses it for, sometimes it’s for a future purpose or reason we haven’t gotten to yet. Sometimes God heals miraculously, sometimes it just goes away, sometimes it’s for doctors to fix, sometimes it’s for life only to be healed by physical death. Regardless, God is always with us in the pain and suffering in the healing and rejoicing in the day-to-day and in the eternity of it all. This is the understanding God has brought me to for my story, it might be different in a few more years, a few more health issues, a few more read-throughs of the Bible. That’s okay. I might not be at peace with my pain, but I am at peace with my God.

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