Dealing...one day at a time

Myrrh plant - Photo courtesy of Google Images
 

It dawned on me that I had not posted here lately. Two reasons: First, I have been consumed with starting this new project on joy, (which I love!) setting up a new website to go with it: www.joystarters.com, gathering materials in preparation for a big "write in" for the book we will write about "Joy Starters" and making decisions to bring www.fromgodsheart.com to a different server. And secondly, it is abundantly clear that I have energy limitations due to the fact that MS has been an unwelcome squatter in my life.

 

I've been encouraged to be candid about living with MS. I have this to say about that: MS SUCKS! There I said it. It's true. MS has taken away nearly everything that told me who I am and that gave me a sense of worth, value and belonging. It has wrecked havoc on my self image and sorely pressed my faith.

 

 At times I could hear Job's wife screaming at me to curse God and die. For some reason that I do not understand I could not do that. I turned and looked at that screaming demon through my brain fog and sloth-like I slowly thought, "Why would I do that? It doesn't make sense." Like Peter, I thought, "To whom and where would I go if I broke relationship? There is no other place to go for me." I could not wrap my mind around living without Jesus in my life. So I turned to Him with everything and pounded His chest; I shouted, cried and asked my questions, told Him how unfair it was and questioned His motives. Then I went logical and pointed out that He was shotting Himself in the foot because after all He poured into me I would be unable to do what He had gifted and prepared me to do. But it didn't change anything. Not His love for me and not my condition.

 

Let me just stay with the faith part of it...we can come back to the other issues in later blogs. One time in that first year I had one of those times when you don't know if you dreamed or if it was a vision or what. Everything was so foggy. That's what brain damage does to you. You sleep a lot; that's how your brain recovers. So was I sleeping in the day time and had a dream or was it a vision? I don't know. But what I saw was Jesus and me inside a clay jar (must have been a big one!) and we had been wrestling. At the moment we were both resting after a round, my feet up against the side He was leaning on and His feet on the wall that I was leaning against; our clothes stuck to our bodies from sweat; it was pouring down our faces. He is bigger than me, but that did not stop me! I guess I was like Jacob who wrestled with God, but unlike Jacob I don't remember getting any promise out of Him.

 

A couple days earlier someone had given me a song about myrrh and how it's fragrance is released only when it is crushed. As we were catching our breath I told the Lord that unlike myrrh, crushing me only made a stink. He smiled at me and there was so much love and understanding in that smile that it undid me! I get teary eyed just thinking about it. Without words He communicated, "of course it would smell that way because your senses were not yet fully redeemed!" But that look of love in His eyes...somehow I knew that I would be unable to understand even if He explained it to me. Understanding something of that magnitude is beyond my human design capabilities. I didn't like that answer but my spirit knew that He was right. Now some 17+ years later I know that I don't have the capacity physically, mentally, emotionally or spiritually to process all that happened to me so it sits on a shelf I labeled "mystery" and as He grows my capacity we will process one aspect after another.

 

What do you do with a God like that? Who let's you beat on Him, yell at Him and question His motives and still hold onto you with such love? Akkk it just unwinds every over tight spring in my body! My response was to just love Him back...with however much capacity I had.

If you have a chronic condition or an "incurable disease," how has it affected your faith and how did you handle your diagnosis?

Blessings, Carol Brown
Author of The Mystery of Spiritual Sensitivity and Highly Sensitive
www.fromgodsheart.com
www.joystarters.com
Work in Progrss -- Joy Starters