Could I be a little more ambiguous?
I came home early from class today and rummaged through the cabinet for something to eat because it's the end of the month and money is running low. I found black beans and corn, which actually turned out to be a great meal. No one was home to talk to while I ate so I actually turned on the TV. If you know my house then you know its a weird day when the TV is turned on. After four straight minutes of pressing buttons and trying to get the stinking guide to stop covering the screen, the TV landed on that show about baby stories. I don't know what its called and it is embarrassing to admit that I left it on that channel - because I'm not a huge fan of babies or reality TV. But the TV had defeated me so I sat down and watched this lady talk about how she was having her second child and was worried about her pregnancy. She had undergone a liver transplant at age 13 and went on to explain that women who have organ transplants usually don't carry their child to full term. And all of the sudden I'm covering my face with my hands and weeping. But this time it's tears of joy.
I don't have PSC.
A liver biopsy came back last week with only mild evidence of inflammation in my liver.
I'm not going to need a liver transplant.
The pain I have experienced for the last few months is not going to last my whole life.
I can have kids without worrying about being sick and missing out on parts of their childhood.
I can get married without feeling like a burden.
I can travel.
I can take risks.
I can live, actually live. And it wasn't until this week that I realized I had somehow forgotten that I could.
But what is better than all of that is that for the first time in two years I believe in the character of God without having to struggle and wrestle and question. I knew He is faithful, but He has given me the grace to see it in my life. For at least this one moment, my definition of good is aligned with His. I feel like I'm drowning in His grace.
I have a million thoughts to work through. I can't do the Lord's work any justice by trying to explain it here. All I can say is that He is who He says He is and it is not because I am healed. He would have been the same God if I was being rushed to the hospital right now for emergency surgery. But He has given me the gift of himself this week. And that is what I really wanted.
I constantly doubt the Lord. I don't really doubt that He exists, but I do doubt that He loves. I doubt that He listens or even cares. Sometimes I am fully convinced He uses us at His own disposal and thinks nothing of our own good. And in the last year it has become harder and harder to believe Him. As I have looked down at my swollen hands or across the room at my best friend who I nearly lost, I have almost given up. But He hasn't let me give up completely. He gave me enough strength to hold on. To believe that He is enough. That He is fighting for me in the best possible way.
I came to a point this year when I accepted He wasn't going to save me in this world. That my health wasn't going to get better and it was now up to me to believe that disease is the best. He helped me believe that. And if I get sick again, I will believe it again. But instead of Him deserting me like I deserve, and instead of Him holding my hand and walking me through sickness as I expected - He made me well. Not my body.
My soul.
My heart.
"For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD.
For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts. "
neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD.
For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts. "
If I never feel the amount of joy I have felt this week ever again in my life I won't be surprised. Because this joy doesn't come from this world.
