Imagine with me walking around in a constant “brain fog”, unable to think clearly, feeling like your head was full of cotton. You know, the way you can feel after taking Benadryl – dazed and not thinking well. Imagine feeling exhausted every single minute of every single day, regardless of how much sleep you get. So exhausted that you can barely hold your eyes open, barely stand, barely comprehend, barely stay awake. In public you force yourself to be “alert”, only to collapse when you are in the privacy of your own space.
Imagine with me that every cell in your body is starved for energy. Your eye sockets ache, your vision is blurry, your skin itches non-stop, your muscles throb. Your body has become your prison. As terrible as the physical symptoms are, the emotional turmoil is even worse. Anxiety and depression have moved in and are your constant companions. Imagine living like this not just for a week, or a month, or a year. Imagine living like this for nearly a decade of your life.
This was my life from around 16 to my mid 20′s. I wrote a little bit about it in the post Near to the Brokenhearted. And boy was I a broken person during those years. I kept the depths of my brokenness from everyone, including my own family. They knew that I was suffering from an “illness”, but they didn’t know how dark my life had become as a result. Maybe I was embarrassed? This “illness” resulted in years of groveling in darkness with very little hope, desperately clinging to my savior. I was so broken, so dependent on Jesus to carry me through every moment of every day. He is the only one who is familiar with every single tear I shed as I silently suffered. I am not sure I can accurately recall just how desperate I felt.
In case you are curious, I struggled with nearly constant hypoglycemia (low blood sugar) and a myriad of symptoms connected to it as a result of a medication my doctor had prescribed me. Because I began taking the medication so young, I was unable to connect the two. It wasn’t until nearly a decade later after I stopped the medication that my symptoms drastically improved. During that dark time, though, I had no way of knowing that I would be sitting here years later, clear-headed and completely recovered, typing a blog post sharing my experience with others. I dreamed that I would get better, but it seemed just that – a dream.
As he passed by, he saw a man blind from birth. And his disciples asked him, ‘Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?’ Jesus answered, ‘It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him.’ (John 9:1-3)
And so as I read the story about a man blind from birth, my heart wells up with sympathy. I know what it is like to be broken, just like many of you do! To be part of humanity, but separate because of an illness. And yet this man was in an even worse place than all of us. This poor man didn’t just suffer the physical torment of blindness, but the judgements that came from people, the very people who are suppose to be the most loving and caring – those who are religious. Even Jesus’ own disciples assumed this man’s blindness was a result of sin – his parents’ or his own. Jesus sets the record straight when he says,
It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him. (John 9:3)
How often do we view our own or others’ illnesses, sicknesses, or disabilities in the light of God’s glory. That the reason we, or they, may be experiencing brokenness is that through it God might be glorified? I, thankfully, have been well from the symptoms I mention for over 7 years now. It is an answer to prayer like none other in my life! But just recently I was diagnosed with the bowel disease Ulcerative Colitis. Am I going to feel sorry for myself and complain about a chronic illness or am I going to trust God, praying that he uses my illness to glorify him, whether I am healed or remain sick? What about you? Pastor John Piper says,
God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.
And how much more God is glorified when we are satisfied in him in our pain and suffering! This blind man didn’t have the privilege of “seeing” the Jesus we know and love until after he was healed. Upon learning who Jesus really was he worshipped. Let’s worship now even as we suffer in life! And similar to the situation of the man born blind, God gets glory and our sickness or trial is about something so much greater than ourselves. Let’s not waste a great opportunity to allow God to shine through our difficult circumstances in life, onto the lives of those around us! Then we can have great joy even in real pain.
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