It is September 18, 2001, terrorist attacked America a week ago today. Many people have died, many more people have lost a loved one to this tragedy, and others have lost or temporarily lost their job. America stands in fear of the confusion and loss of the lives of so many people. Also on this day, I have been at home as a disabled American, sick, weak, in pain, and lacking physical and money resources to fulfill what I thought was my role in this world. At this point it has been over a year since my health started taking control of my life. My own personal life has been turned upside down and is having great difficulty moving forward. I have had to quit work, and I am not capable of doing some of the most basic things in life anymore.
When this all began with my health, my Pastor asked me if when my health caused me great difficulty as a child, did any good seem to come from that? I answered quickly, without a doubt, yes! That situation is what called me to want to be a Pastor. Today as I examine what happened last Tuesday, and what has been happening to my life and my body, I can still say Yes!!! Good seems to come even from the worst of times.Times of suffering take our eyes off of earthly rewards. It strengthens the faith of those that endure. Our attitude during our suffering serves as an example for others suffering to follow.
With the tragedy in New York it happened in many different ways and in many different places. People knew again, “We turn to you Lord; because we have no where else we can turn to.” Someone in New York at a Church service said that he noticed that more people were praying at that time in America than had ever before. Prayer is a good that came from that tragedy, because no longer did trifle stuff seem as important. People loved their neighbor because love was than and is always, the only thing that can take us through. God was truly at work within us as even the children gave what they could. People in America gave money, blood, and their talents to help. America was united, America worked together with many other countries, united in one goal.
United, isn’t that a special word? I hope you think so. I am a United Methodist. We are a living in the United States of America that is a part of the United Nations. I believe we have a long way to go, to have the united front that God calls for us, where United brings all humanity together as one. “If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose.” (Philippians 2:1, 2) But I see this as an important start. For when we are united we are powerful. “May the God who gives endurance and encouragement give you a spirit of unity among yourselves as you follow Christ Jesus.” (Romans 15:5)
I have searched, searched within myself and within my marriage to see what good is coming from my sickness that is keeping me home? What do I need to see? What do I need to learn? What do I need to accomplish to move on from this point? What I am doing at this moment to day, Tuesday, September 18, 2001? Do I need to do what I never actually succeed at doing as a child after I lost my memory? Do I need to write that book? Or is it just a few sermons, to express how it is possible to love and live even when that seems impossible?
I still can see God. When my friend said to me on Tuesday, Why? Why did this happen, I didn’t know than quite how to say why that really was not very important. We sin when we angrily ask is god is in control how could He let this happen? We should not use what we do not understand as an excuse to not trust in God. God may be working in ways we know nothing about. God will give us more than we can imagine as we live within Him in eternity. Bad things happen because we live in a fallen world where both believers and unbelievers have to deal with tragic consequences of sin. The good people though can know that the suffering will come to an end. Trust in God to work His purpose through you. Although there is an explanation for our suffering, we may not know it while we are here on Earth. We must see God for who He is. We must courageously accept what God allows to happen in our lives. God allows evil for a time but He often turns it around for good. “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” (Romans 8:28)
The reason “why” comes from that message that I had to learn back when I was 12 years old. (That is 12 years ago since I am now 24.) Why did the terrorist kill so many innocent lives can partly be explained by God gave us free will, to learn to grow, and to appreciate Him. He gave us free will because we are “in his image”; we are not puppets. Thus we choose (all of us) choose to sin sometimes. That is why we need Jesus Christ our Lord to save us. But explaining that “why” doesn’t work for all evils. It doesn’t do a good job of explaining the sicknesses and diseases in the world. Who gave me this sickness? Who sinned so that I have epilepsy, colonitis, pouchitis, Interstitial Cisitis, Agina, and Endometriosis? Did I sin so badly that I disserve this? What could I have done to get all of this? That question is a lot harder to answer.
I look than to the book of Job. Which I think is somewhat funny, God and the Devil debating if my faith is strong enough to handle all of these tests? In the book Job, Job lost all of his wealth, children, and health through no fault of his own. His friends were convinced that Job had sinned to cause his suffering. Job suffered most of from not being able to understand “why” God allowed him to suffer. There is an ongoing conversation in Job between God and Devil. Satan tries to prove to God that Job only loves Him because of his blessings. In Job God puts a limit to how much suffering Satan puts Job through.
Through Job I am able to see Yet see Yes, good does come from these terrible things. When everything is stripped away we are to recognize that God is all we ever really had. God may give us Himself but not the details of the plan He has for us. Job never gave up on God. He placed his hope in God . In the end Job receives all of his gifts back in abundance. We too will receive our blessing with God in Heaven.
Can you believe it? It is hard for me to believe, where did this faith come from? Even today It has been hard to understand faith as a gift, until I look into that 12-year-old girl, and I know that the kind of faith she had could not have been something she learned or decided. She defiantly reicieved it. Faith is a gift God gives us because He is saving us. When I was 12 years old I bet I wasn’t much of a sinner. I suppose I didn’t perfectly follow that very important commandment “honor thy father and mother” all of the time. I was a little naughty. But I couldn’t imagine having sinned so badly that I deserved what had happened to me.
When I was 10 years old I was diagnosed with having Ulcerative Colitis. I took medication for two years before the disease had done so much harm to my colon that having it was killing me. The doctors in my area felt I should I have the surgery at Mayo. The drive there was terrible for me. I have a small vision in my head of looking at my self and laying practicly against the wall of the ambulance and my mother and a man on the other side of the ambulance. I don’t know what the memory is of.
What I know is that I went in and out of consiousness because of the loss of blood. It was a scary ride and I received a blood transfusion when I arrived at Mayo. My surgery was the next day. It was successful but later that day I had a series of Grand Mal seizures that the doctors could not get me out of. I had never had a seizure before. From the seizures I ended up in a comma for three days.
When I woke up I had very little memory of my life before that point. It was much more severe than normal disorientation. The memories of the 12 years I had lived to that point were almost impossible for me to get to. I spent 66 days at Mayo before I went home. To this day, the first 12 years of my life are somewhat blocked from my memory. I have to struggle a lot to remember things from my life than.
What really hurt me was when I was home again and trying to go back to school. I had to return back to the life I didn’t remember. Everyone around me remembered me and knew me in someway, except me. It affected every part of my life. I had been a smart girl as a child, that changed. I couldn’t get along with the people that used to be my friends. They knew me, I did not know them. I couldn’t get along with my family, lots of problems there. I had prayed to God and asked “Why I am alive?” I knew I had gotten quite close to death a few times while in the hospital. I wondered if it had been God’s plan for me to die, for to live as I was wasn’t working.
I have a lot of emotional blockage of the first year or so after my memory loss. I know it was terrible for me. I seemed to go through the stages of a loss as if I part of me had died. I did a lot of searching. I was very different. I had lost a lot of things, was behind my peers in many ways. One thing I did gain was an insight. I thought about things, prayed, and talked about things most people don’t get to until they are over thirty, maybe fifty. Eventually I was behind my peers but had an insight of some things way ahead of them.
During my struggles I asked God a lot of questions. I got mad at Him. I yelled at Him. I cried, oh did I ever. I would open up my Bible and say, speak to me Lord. Why??? God told me, and believe when I say, “God told me” that I mean God Himself told me, not to my ears but to my heart, that I didn’t deserve my sickness. God was not trying to hurt me or teach me anything. He also told me it really wasn’t important to understand “why” there was sickness as much as it was important to understand that with pain comes a gift.
You did not hear me wrong, I said a gift. I learned something at the age of 12 that is saving my life today and every single day I struggle to understand why am I spending another day tired, weak, sick, in pain and at home. That gift was faith, hope, and love. Faith is where it begins as we take in God’s message. Hope is the attitude we must have. Love is the action.
I had faith, that God was going to use me. That there was something about my pain and experience that was going to help me to help others. It didn’t make a lot of sense when I was 12 as to what that meant, but I knew it was real because behind the confusion of my loss of memory was a new understanding of faith, of God, and of who I was. I didn’t remember the girl I used to be at all at that point but I did know my pain was meant to point me in the right direction toward God, toward helping others, and toward that “path or direction” we all need to figure out we are going to take somehow, someday.
I said I was also given the gift of hope. Hope, that my future was going to be one worth living. Hope that as the song “If I know you” a song from Ouf Of the Grey says, “The worst of times will work out right.” I also said that I received the gift of love. During the time I am talking about, I had a list of things that were important to me and none of them where going right. I couldn’t get along with anybody, they knew who I had been but I didn’t, I was only 12 years old and had just forgotten the only years of my life I had to learn that there were people in my life that loved me. Yet God somehow, performed a miracle in my heart that I knew He did. Which helped me to know that so did a lot of other people.
Now lets jump forward back to today or this year. I told you I have been struggling to understand what is coming from this time at home sick. And the question in my head isn’t why like it was when I was 12 but what. The correct question is what? What do I do with this situation? What do I learn, what is the message, or “That Perfect Surprise” that comes from that hopeless situation?
Many different answers have come to my head. I struggle everyday just to have the strength to do the smallest of things let alone—use my sicknesses for a perfect surprise. Yet somewhere inside of me that 12 year old girl still believes. Still I turn back to the story of Job. How long was Job going to be tested? Until he Passed? God believed in Job through the whole experience. Yet the Devil thought if he just took enough stuff away from Job’s happiness he would no longer believe.
At this point in my life, now at 24, I know how God knew. Even more than the innocent faith of the child I was at 12, I know. I know something I didn’t know at 12 years old. Something inside of me says I will always believe. “No doubt” by Petra, states that “this test of your faith will last, as long as it takes to pass, till you have no more doubt you’ll endure. And after all is done what we find out, that all we need to have is no doubt. There is time to take a reckless leap of faith. This time of trouble won’t last.” I know more than any one else, my actions don’t always seem faith full. My prayer life just isn’t perfectly active, but that one constant that people this week after the attack have tried to accpress truly is there. “I AM” God is always here. The path of our growth isn’t always the way of our choosing.
I know this is difficult. When I was 13 I used to pray “Thank you God, for the experience I had with my health, and I have learned from It. Yet Lord, now that I have grown can you please take the Epilepsy away?” I had difficulty understanding that even though I had changed I still had to live with this disease. Today, I am still asking God that. In about a years time now I have been diagnosed with Interstitial Cystitis, Angina, and Endometriosis. I have been through horrendous pain. I would get so hot and weak from the pain I was sure I was close to passing out. I went through the confusion of not knowing what was wrong with me. I couldn’t believe I had to deal with all of this. My Pouchitis acted up again. It had been in remission for two years. Why me?
I had to quit my job. My goals in life have been upside down. This had been the first year of marriage. I was usually to sick to do most “newly weds” do. My hopes of having a child have been tossed into an uproar. My husband, Mike, has had to see me in ways he can hardly handle. His dreams in life are loosing their faith. I cannot figure out why this isn’t ending. It has been one thing after another. Something inside of me is telling me that I need to find the message in this. There is something I need to do. Just as when I was 12 though, I have only bits and pieces of what they may be. It is taking too much time (in my book) for it to all come together.
As I said before, God had given me that “direction” My next goal in life is to go to seminary and become a Pastor. Why do I have this detour of my sicknesses taking me away from seminary? When I look to God, my heart tells me His path for me has not completely changed. Perhaps when I was 12 I had only learned so much, didn’t get enough sermon material from that one faith experience to do all the work God has called me to do.
I amaze myself looking at these sicknesses in this way. Even in these darkest times I see a faith experience in the background that says if I look hard enough there is a trace of sunlight pointing me to “it is going to get better.” Better seems so distant lately, when will this end? I sing myself a song from “If I know You” from Out of the Grey, “If I know you, and I know I do, you will turn this day, into a perfect surprise, and the worst of times will work out right.”
You may wonder how is that different from what I learned at age 12? This year, 12 years later I learned that I still have that faith in me somewhere. Many times I speak of myself when I was 12 as if she too is a different person than I am. God was in her so much sometimes it is hard to believe that was me. This year though I have gotten to know her again.
This year I gained a strength that these sicknesses and money struggles cannot take away from me. No one can. I know that I will pass this test. There will not be doubt. I wish, with all the wishing that I could do, that I could give this knowledge to you.
Knowing, that God is still here. I don’t know if I can give this to you. Some of you probably have it. I know I am not alone when I say, I know. Out of the Grey, must “know” too to write that song “I Know You”, and for this Christianity to go on for 2000 years some other people must have known. Yet for those of you who do not yet know, the message I know I need to give to you is Listen. Open your heart to God and He will be there. There is a yearning. You may not know that you have that yearning, but I believe that yearning is a gift, that people received before they know. If you have that yearning to know God, than please trust me, you can know God.
I know that faith like this seems like some distant thing that prophets, Pastors, and missionaries, seem to have to some people. It may seem distant and out of reach, but it isn’t. I may have been blessed with these situations that forced me to decide “Either there is a higher power that will bring some good into this mess or I will never make it”. With this gift I am called to tell you about faith, hope, and love and give it to you.
All of us, all of us face some trial in our lives, Pain is a part of life. Please learn from my pain, and from those that were directly affected by this Tragedy. We know that. Let us go beyond knowing that there is pain and know that there is growth and after growth there is Faith, Hope, and Love. From Faith, Hope, and Love, comes God.
Fear came into America on Tuesday. The “tough” people of New York were forced to face that sometimes we are weak. America had to face our weakness. Yet there are more changes we have to make because of this Tragedy. We have to do more than protect us from another terrorist attack. “For when we are weak we are very strong!” Very strong! Because it is when we are weak that we allow God in. We let God in because there is nowhere else to turn when we are faced with the fact that our humanity, intelligence and power of America, is not enough. So we let God in. For when we let God in we survive. It is when we unite and look to God that we have the power to move any mountain. Have you ever wondered what God can do with your weakness? If God can use me, than he can defiantly use you. When He does you will see and gain that wonderful knowledge that His power is made perfect in weakness.
I am not glad that my health has caused me the multitude of problems that I have. I am sorrowful because of all that are suffering from the terrorist attack. Yet I am also glad that even in the worst of situations God can use us and create a miracle. I am sorrowful that so many people have died and lost people that they loved. Yet when times get tuff, Trust in Faith, hope, and love. God is there.
When the media coverage of this tragedy dies down and all that really seems left are the feelings inside of you and your loss, don’t loose sight of the light. When you feel that down to the bottom feeling, when you start to feel alone from your pain, turn around with your cares and find God there. Your heart will know it is God. Allow it to happen. It can happen to you. When the healing begins, and sometimes the beginning seems more like circles and backwards and forwards thoughts, God will be right there with you. Open your heart. Don’t make any more excuses. Forgive me, please, for saying doesn’t make any more excuses, because I know that my health has been my excuse for a long, long, time. Yet because I know that “excuse” that says to you no, or why, or how, or whatever your excuse is, turn that excuse around, that weakness can be your strength. That is where God is.
“When it feels like my chances are one in a million, you give me one million reasons to believe” (One Million Reasons by Aaron Jeoffrey). It may seem impossible. It may seem like a million miles away from where you are right now. I cannot promise that it will all be better tomorrow, or even by next year. Yet God will provide. He is starting right now if you look. Everyday, every moment there is that gift of God at work in the midst of the darkness. Look for it; follow it.
In the end all will be understood. Right now, what you need is the faith, hope, and love. There is no room for doubt, even when you can’t believe why God would allow, that disease, that murderer, that terrorist, that evil, that hate. I know to not ask, to not wonder seems impossible. It is hard to understand. Yet would you really want to understand everything?
Here comes the bad news. WE ARE ONLY HUMAN. If I understood everything of why as a human, how could I possibly believe in a higher power? You need to admit to yourself that sometimes it is nice to not understand. Sometimes it is better to see that things are beyond your control. You need to let it go. Even when you’re feeling down, let go and let God.
Listen to God’s voice within your heart. Turn it all around. You can do it. Don’t bother to ask, “How can I make sense of everything?” Maybe it is not ours to know. Remember the Lord. Matthew 20:22 Jesus speaks and says, “You don’t know what you are asking”… I know it is hard to not ask. Sometimes you need to ask that question that is blocking you from seeing God’s work. So ask it. Pray to God and allow those frustrated feelings of doubt, confusion, and pain to come out, but do not stop there. If you receive the answer to turn it all around, turn it all around. When instead of answering your question He gives you what you do need to know which is Faith, Hope, and the Love of God. You will be able to take one step further, day-by-day, until the path of God is straight once more.
You will find out how powerful faith, hope, and love is. When you have faith, hope and love you allow god inside of you. You will see you do not need to control everything. God is in control, only when we let Him in. When you let God in you will feel the power within you. You can have faith to move a mountain inside of you.
NOTE: I wrote this when IC caused me the worse pain of my life. I have been labeled muliti-diseased with a weak immune system. I have:
Endometriosis
Rapid heart beat’
Low Blood Pressure
Interstitial Cystitis
Pouchitis
Epilepsy
Reoccurring yeast infections
Reoccurring shingles
Allergies
Rapid leg movement
GERD
Gall Stones Tendonitis
Reoccurring Gastritis
