Sometimes I’m Not Ready For a Miracle

I came across this quote the other day, about the Israelites wandering around in the desert for 40 years:

Their journey was a journey of liberation. They were being liberated from slavery in Egypt, where they had been dehumanized and exploited, so that their elite Egyptian slave drivers could build their own never-enough system. It was also a journey of discipline. They were learning values on the journey that would form their national character when they finally settled down — so they wouldn’t become either slaves or slave drivers in the future. (Naked Spirituality, Brian McLaren)

That struck me in a profound way, because it describes so well the journey I’ve been on in the last year. I’ve written before about how I’ve been struggling with some health challenges for over ten years. I’ve had people pray over me many times, and I’ve begged and pleaded and cried to God many, many more times myself for a miracle.

A few years ago, I started noticing some small, slow changes, and since then, my health has improved very gradually. Sometimes I would get so impatient. I believed that God could heal me instantly, but it didn’t look as though that was going to be His chosen method, so I tried to be okay with whatever form healing took.

In this last year, things have been changing in ways I never would have imagined. I’ve always struggled with a lot of stress, fear, and anxiety in my life, and a number of different experiences started to open my eyes to the fact that what needed to change, perhaps more than my physical health, was my mental and spiritual health.

God was after my mind and my thoughts. There was much fear in me surrounding my health problems, and I struggled with trying to choose and control what kind of thoughts filled my mind.

Many of my health problems were related to stress, so as God did a new work in my mind, my body followed along.

There is still much room for improvement, but what struck me about the Israelites is this:

If God had brought them straight to the Promised Land, it would have taken 11 days, instead of 40 years. God needed to do a great work in them first.

They weren’t ready for the Promised Land.

Those years wandering around in the desert stripped them of their old identity, and turned them into God’s people.

photo   © 2011   Moyan Brenn , Flickr

 

If God would have given me my miracle right away, and healed my body in an instant, I would have ended up right back in the same place. Thoughts of fear and anxiety would still have enslaved me, and my body would have continued to respond to that.

He’s taking me around the long way, because He is doing a great work in me. He’s making my mind ready for the miracle of healing that is slowly taking over my body.

I also need to be stripped of my old identity.

Oh, how wonderful that He loves us too much to leave us the way we are! He takes us on whatever path we need the most, and gets us to the Promised Land in the perfect way, at the perfect time.

I still have so much to learn, and I continue to hope for more healing in my life, both mental and physical, but I think I’m starting to enjoy the journey. I’m at peace with the fact that there’s some scenery I need to see first, as we go around the long way.

And I don’t believe it’s punishment or hardship to need to go the long way. I think it’s just life. If I can accept that, and if I can soak in each step of this process, there can be joy in God’s timing, instead of impatience.

He’ll get me there, in His perfect timing.

Are you waiting for a miracle? How is God transforming you, as you wait?

“We” Instead of “Me”

Once a week, I get to spend time with a wonderful therapist named Giselle.

I love going to see her, partly because she makes the pain in my body go away, and partly because she is such an amazing person. She has this wonderful combination of positive, enthusiastic energy, while still being incredibly relaxed and laid back.

Each time I go to see her, she is slowly changing my view of health and wellness.

The other day, I was sharing with her how my personal definition of “wellness” leads me to see myself as an unhealthy person, even though I know I have so much to enjoy and be thankful for. The physical limitations I have are not very great, compared to what many people have to live with.

But Giselle told me something that changes everything.

She asked me to imagine a person with some physical challenges, but chooses to faces those difficulties with acceptance and a positive attitude, and surrounding themselves with great relationships and a rich, wonderful life in spite of the pain.

Then she asked me to think of a person without any physical limitations, seeming to be in excellent health, but miserable in every other way, suffering through a horrible job, loss of relationships,  so unhappy that one day, this person commits suicide.

Then she asked me, “Who is the ‘healthier’ person?”

Maybe physical health isn’t quite as important as I’ve thought.

This idea of health simmered in my mind for a few days. Could I consider myself “healthy”, even if I was never able to overcome my physical limitations? Could I let go of the labels I’ve claimed for my life?

In the meantime, we traveled to BC for Ben’s grad, and the speaker at the graduation ceremony was just incredible.

He was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease about five years ago, and he had the most amazing attitude I’ve ever seen in someone dealing with physical difficulties.

He talked about the choices he had to make, and decisions regarding how he wanted to live his life despite his diagnosis. And he shared that the most important thing he had learned was this:

“Illness starts with ‘i’, but wellness starts with ‘we’.”

He asked us all to close our eyes, and think about “I”.

Then he asked us to think about “you”.

Finally, he asked us to visualize “we”.

I started out with a picture of myself in my mind, but I ended up thinking about the people beside me, all of us together on that bench. The emotions that come up when I visualized “we” instead of “I” are dramatically different.

I was reminded of Giselle and her definition of health.

And then I remembered how someone once said to me, “If you haven’t got your health, you haven’t got anything.”

I do not agree with that.

I once read Corrie Ten Boom’s story, and she shared how her mother, unable to get out of bed, would spend her days writing encouraging letters to people. She wasn’t wasting away, useless and depressed. She was doing what she could, which was actually quite a bit.

photo   © 2010   William Arthur Fine Stationery , Flickr

If you haven’t got your health, you’ve still got a whole lot of something. You just need to be willing to give it to others, rather than sitting around feeling sorry for yourself, and thinking about “I, I, I.”

That idea goes far beyond health issues. I think every person out there could gain from “we” instead of “me”.

No matter what my personal challenges might be, there are still countless reasons to be thankful and joyful. There are countless ways to reach out to the people around me.

During our struggle with infertility, I spent years feeling depressed and frustrated because my situation wasn’t changing. I could spend hours praying for myself, begging God to do something new in my life.

All that time, and it turns out that “something new” could have been getting up and doing something useful for another person.

I’ve spent far too much time thinking about “me” instead of “we”!

What is your definition of health or wellness?