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My Wholeness is in You
by Jennifer Mobbs Once again, I am resting in my bed feeling discouraged; I never would have believed I would not be healthy all my life. I cant seem to decide what to do, to my right on my bedside table are a multitude of prescriptions meant to help me feel better and stop the pain; and to my left side is my faithful pug snuggled-up next to me. She is very old, blind and deaf, but she is like Velcro, wherever I go, she follows even though she can barley walk. She is fast asleep breathing deeply looking so comfortable. I cant help but reach down to stroke her head. She acknowledges me by letting out a long sigh. I take her paw in my hand while I lean my head back into my pillows feeling overwhelmed by the pain in my body. I know the medications will help me, but I am so tired of reaching for pills. I whisper to myself, Why Lord? Why must I go through this? Just then my pug tries to adjust her position on the bed, grunting a little as she moves I try to help her and she lets out a little yelp of pain. I pat her head telling her its OK and she settles back down. I start to reach for one of my medications; how I wish God could hold my hand and tell me that everything is OK. I know He loves me, but why hasnt He healed me? I love my little pug dog, but I cannot remove her pain. But God is the Creator of everything He could take away my pain and make me whole. Besides, couldnt God use me more effectively if I wasnt sick? Almost instantly as the words leave my mouth, I hear myself say out loud, but who says I am not whole now? That question is easy to answer; my family says it, society says it, other Christians say it, pretty much anyone who knows what happened to me believes I am not whole, they use to see me, but now they see an illness not a whole person. Some people have even told me I am paying for a past sin or un-forgiveness in my heart somewhere. I sat up right in my bed and I reached for my Bible. My mind churning with thoughts, with questions I have for all those people who dont see me and even for myself. Is it possible that my life, my body in this condition is whole; could this be my wholeness here on earth for this time for Gods purpose? It all started three and half years ago. I had always been healthy and active. I loved to snow ski, play tennis, run. I enjoyed the freedom that good health gave me, but the truth is I never really thought about it. I knew people got sick, got cancer and other terrible diseases, but that didnt touch my world. At first when I became ill I put it off as stress from work, maybe I had eaten something that didnt agree with me. But weeks went by and I wasnt getting better, in fact I was getting worse. Within three months many Doctors had seen me. I had gone through multitudes of tests and been given so many different diagnoses it was ridiculous. Each day became worse than the day before, I couldnt eat anything and I had lost close to 60 pounds. My body was simply wasting away; my hair was falling out, my skin was gray, my eyes sunken in, but the worst part was the constant pain. It felt like my insides were being twisted continually. I hadnt realized that I had begun to wrap my arms around myself trying to hold everything together. Finally a new test was performed that revealed I had contracted a parasite that had moved into my colon and was slowly starving me to death. The source of the parasite may have been contaminated water or worse someone else who had the parasite passed it on to me because they didnt wash their hands. By this time I was bed ridden, I was unable to eat or drink enough to sustain my bodys normal functions. As I began to slip away I was rushed to the hospital emergency room. There I was told I was below the hospitals rating of starvation, my organs were beginning to fail and if we couldnt turn this around I had matter of weeks before I would not recover. I guess that was a nice way to saying I was dying. The protocol to kill these parasites wasnt known, so the Doctors took a chance, a guess and gave me a course of very strong antibiotics. The antibiotics worked and killed the parasites; unfortunately the damage to my colon and my body had already been done. Because the parasites had gone undetected for so long I was suffering from a multiple medical issues. Although I am now parasite free, I am not free from the destruction my body suffered. I cannot work anymore; I miss a lot of Holiday events and family functions. Travelling is pretty much out of the question. Its funny, what people assume, the questions are often the same havent you prayed for complete healing? You know God can restore your body, maybe you dont understand Gods Grace and His healing powers! I could explain it to you and pray for you! That day I became determine to be able to answer each person who now saw me as less, but with the love of God and what better way then to remind them of the mighty men of the Bible who may not have been considered physically whole in their lifetime. Yet, God considered them whole and spoke His Word through them changing lives. Jacob wrestled with an Angel all night and just before daybreak the Angel touched Jacobs hip and gave him a new name Israel because he struggled with God and man and had overcome, however, Israel walked with a limp for the rest of his life. The Apostle Paul talks about a torn in his side He pleaded, (prayed) to God three times to be freed from it but God told Paul His Grace was sufficient and He did remove the torn. Although we dont know exactly what the torn was it obviously caused Paul great pain, but Paul continued on with his ministry. Timothy, another Apostle of Christ was encouraged by Paul to drink a little wine for his stomach because of his frequent illnesses. But my favorite is Sarah, Abrahams wife who was unable to have children until God intervened at the age of ninety years old; she became pregnant and gave birth to a son named Isaac. God didnt see any of these people as broken, worthless, or unusable. He saw them as whole; whatever they lacked physically; God supplied, He made up the difference. God saw them through His eyes and He was able to use them to touch thousands, maybe millions of souls. God has always taken what the world doesnt value and made it valuable. So here I am after an obscure illness has left me unable to work God has given me a new occupation of His choosing. To answer the people who dont think I understand Gods Grace and Gods Healing Power; if there was only one thing I understood that is Gods Grace. His Grace has sustained me, protected me, taught me, allowed me to repent, and given me the ability to accept my physical limitations. Without Gods Grace I couldnt breath and I wouldnt want to. Of Course I have prayed a thousand times to be healed, I have pleaded, begged and cried, but I am still as I am, but that does not lessen my faith one bit. In fact it gives me an even stronger reason to hold on to God because I now know my Wholeness is in Him, it always was and it always will be. God fills in what I lack, He sustains me and that is more enough. So I will continue to live my life, take my medications, pray and write and maybe one day God will heal my body completely, but in truth it doesnt really matter, because He has given me the peace that surrounds me and that is just as good as Him sitting down next me and my little pug dog and telling me I am going to be OK. I have been writing all my life, I just didn't realize it until I was my late 40's. I hope my experiences can help others who have gone through similar trials. Article Source: http://www.faithwriters.com |