What I Learned About God When Things Crashed
(Written for the “Sister to Sister” publication of World Team.)
August 1997
Six years ago, after a post-polio syndrome super-crash, when my legs suddenly turned into burning fire sticks and my whole nervous system felt like it was going to explode, I returned from Irian Jaya, Indonesia. I had been there seventeen years but had never faced a challenge like this one. Not only was I bereft of what I had planned to be a 30-year career, but I also had to immediately grapple with the issues of new and quickly multiplying disabilities and dependencies. For me, facing an issue means dealing with spiritual matters first.
Although I am better now, during those dark days of the fast tumble into increasing physical weakness and energy loss, I learned more deeply then ever who God really is, and what my relationship with him should be. I learned that:
I may ask, but must never insist on healing. To insist implies that I, not God, have the correct perspective on what this is all about.
I may ask for the reasons this has happened, but to give God all my reasons it shouldn't, questions his justice. Though I don't know them, I will trust God’s plans: “For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” (Jeremiah 29:11)
Accepting and fully expressing grief is essential. Loss is sad. Even Jesus cried in sadness -- but never in self pity. I must resist that.
I pray for joy remembering that joy does not necessarily mean freedom from burdens. I am learning to recognize joy’s various packagings and to be quick to accept all that God sends to me.
I must always pray for insight into creative (or obvious) ways to use the pain and weakness for God's glory. I will not waste the pain.
When in a deep pit of depression, the only way up is out. When I reach out to help fellow strugglers, whatever their problem, I am lifted up. Inner peace comes when I accept and share God's comfort, "who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God." (2 Corinthians 1:3-4)
But I mentioned that I am better now -- and HOW!! After five years of being too weak and exhausted to drive, in August I took a 1001-mile trip, driving every inch alone. After needing a respirator 15 hours out of 24, with doctor’s hearty approval I sent it back, not needing it any more. In fact, after not even being able to sing hymns with the congregation, I’m just about ready to sing solos again! Formerly I could walk only about 20 feet twice a day. Now, with crutches, I can walk three or four blocks at a time. Before, exhaustion limited any public speaking to maybe 30 minutes every two months, with two weeks to “crash” afterwards. Recently I had eleven speaking engagements in six weeks. I taught four times every morning during a week of my church’s VBS. I am writing and teaching six-week seekers’ Bible studies and am involved in other regular outreaches. You get the picture -- it went from smudged grays to crisp colors. The changes began happening after last October, when the Lord led me to a little-known clinic in Mississippi.
“Wow! God is good!” is a comment I often hear these days as people see the dramatic difference in what I can do. Yes, he most certainly is, but not because he did some things that made my life more comfortable. My circumstances are not the measure of God’s character. Even if I had come back from Mississippi worse, my anchor would still have been “God is good.” This, I think, is the most important and foundational of all the things which moved, these past years, from mind to heart and became a part of my active theology. That is, the conviction that God is good because that is his character. If I am on my back breathing through a machine, God is good. If I am on my feet singing, God is good. My life-style has changed, but not my life’s quality because that is based on the immeasurable value which God’s love has placed on me, no matter what my body can physically do.
Sisters, you may forget everything else I’ve said, but please remember, know and root yourself in this truth:
God is good, no matter what our circumstances are. God is good. Period. That is his character.
These are some things I learned when things crashed.
