If you’re getting the idea by now that much of what I’ve learned has been through suffering, adversity, and seeing how wrong things go around me when people make bad decisions, you’d have the right idea. Today’s lesson I’m sharing about is no different.
Where it all began
I was beginning my junior year of high school and starting out on my journey as a dual credit student in the year 2014. For those who don’t know, dual credit is when a high school student takes college level classes for credit both in high school and towards college later on. I was majoring in business and was there to not only finish out my high school education but also to earn my associate’s degree. But the journey to that goal was anything but easy.
Class work wasn’t as hard as I expected, but I had more responsibility because I’d started working a job that required a lot of long, difficult hours. I wasn’t full-time, but with full-time school and a job that could give me upwards of 30 hours a week, I didn’t exactly have much free time or room to rest. This was fine by me as I frequently did more in a day than most people would consider normal. Granted, I spent most of that time in less physical labor than I was doing at work, but that was fine. I knew how to work hard and had grown up doing a lot of different manual labor tasks around the house.
At this time in my life, I was very withdrawn, however. I had serious social anxiety, and I still remember that my dad’s advice to me my first day of school was: “Don’t hide in a corner. Make friends and avoid doing what you usually do because it makes you look like a snob who doesn’t want to talk to anyone.”
Maybe not the nicest way of saying it, but honestly, it’s what people usually thought. They assumed my reservations about interacting with people was just me being stuck up. Whether it was or not really didn’t matter.
My point in saying all of this is to lay the stage for you. At sixteen, I was doing far more than most high school students would be doing. I thought I could handle it no matter how stressful it was. I was wrong.
My entire first year of college, I had one cold or virus after another. I still had to go to work, though, because how else would I pay the tuition fees? So, I ended up hyped up on cold and flu medications constantly. Had I known how badly all of the stress would start to damage my body, I might have taken it easy, but I’ve never been particularly good about knowing my limits. I’m stubborn, and in my mind, the sky is the limit. If no one steps in and pulls me back down to ground me in reality, my ambitions, passions, and to-do lists can quickly start to drown me and I don’t even really understand why it’s a problem. Unfortunately, by the time someone did this for me in high school, it was too late.
I already had fairly extreme depression and serious anxiety due to still having unresolved issues with my mom and the aftershocks of her surgery, but with all the added stress on top of it, I began to break down mentally, emotionally, and physically. I passed classes with flying colors and was one of the harder workers at work, but inside? Everything was crumbling to pieces, spiraling out of control, and heading toward a crash. But I kept going.
Maybe a semester into my first year of dual credit enrollment, I started experiencing terrible abdominal pain. Usually, it was just a sharp or dull pain in one side or another, and I’d ignore it because what else was I to do? I had work and school, and in my mind, I had no time to lie in bed. I did enough of that on the days when my depression was so bad that I did almost nothing productive unless it wasn’t optional. In my mind, the abdominal pain was probably just my body’s response to all the meds.
So, I stopped taking them for a while and suffered with the symptoms of the cold or whatever viral infections I’d caught during that year. I’d work anyway as long as I could still talk to the customers ordering food from me, and I tried to soldier on.
The pains got worse, and I started to have bad attacks where I would wake up in the middle of the night screaming and crying because the pain was so crippling. The first time it happened, my parents thought my appendix might be rupturing because of the severity and the location of the pain. It wasn’t, but so far as the doctors could tell, nothing was wrong with me. I went through xrays in those first two years when we went in, but they found nothing.
So, I went on with life. I sucked it up and learned to deal with the pain. There were days I was hurting so much I couldn’t go to school or work, and there were days where I would work anyway and people would worry because I looked so sick. But I pushed on, trying to ignore the questions that rose in my head. Questions like: why is God letting this happen? Am I being punished for something I did? What did I do to deserve this? Is this ever going to end, or am I stuck with it for the rest of my life?
I’m Sick? Like, Chronically Ill Sick?
The doctor we were seeing at the time diagnosed me with IBS, irritable bowel syndrome. For those who don’t know what that is, it’s a chronic condition that results in a lot of bloating, cramping, gas, and general abdominal discomfort. Most people end up having issues with having normal bowel movements too. I’ll leave it at that and spare you any graphic explanations. Needless to say, it isn’t life threatening, but they don’t know what causes it and have no cure. I was devastated. She gave me a laxative to help with my constipation and recommended I avoid foods that upset my stomach. She didn’t do any other tests to rule anything else out, and nothing she gave me actually worked.
That was toward the beginning of the ordeal. I refused to go see her after the second time of being given the same solutions that didn’t work. So, I suffered for the next two years while I finished my degree. The summer before I went off to Florida to start my bachelor’s degree, we switched doctors. My parents were worried, scared a bit, and couldn’t stand seeing me in such constant pain with no answers. So, they found a doctor who would do tests.
That whole summer, I went through test after test with every one of them coming back with no answers as to what was wrong with me. I got more and more angry, depressed, and confused with every negative test result they did. Did I want to have some debilitating illness? No. But I wanted answers, and to me, it seemed God was refusing them. How could He let this happen and then give me so little consolation? I couldn’t understand it.
During that summer, I spent whatever time I wasn’t working sleeping and trying to ignore the pain. I didn’t do much of anything, and I spent very little time with people. I was too short-tempered to handle anything, really, and my family wasn’t patient with it for the most part. My mom and dad were supportive, but my siblings either didn’t understand or didn’t care that the constant pain made me crankier than usual. I tried to put on a brave face and act like it was all okay, but I couldn’t.
Answers at last
Finally, after all the testing, the diagnosis was handed down. I did have IBS after all, and it wasn’t going to just disappear. I wasn’t going to die, but I was going to have to live with an illness that would cause my abdominal/intestinal muscles to spasm for no reason, resulting in sometimes crippling pain. I lost it.
When I heard that I really did have IBS and that there was no medication that could do anything to solve it, I shut down. I couldn’t process everything I was feeling, and I didn’t understand how God could allow it. I wanted to trust He had a good reason, but at that point in my life, my trust in Him was seriously failing. After everything with my mom, I was hurting, angry, and feeling betrayed even nearly seven years after it happened. I never would’ve admitted it, but I didn’t trust God at all. I didn’t know what He was doing, but it sure looked like He was trying to wreck my life, as awful as that sounded. I held on and stubbornly refused to admit that, instead choosing to make my head believe that He had a good reason even if it was painful then. My heart, however, knew that it wasn’t real faith, and it didn’t get on bored.
Walking through the storm with God
I’m so glad God didn’t leave me there. He could’ve, but He didn’t. The years that followed at Pensacola Christian College were hard. I had no choice but to attend class even when sick because of the attendance policies. Even though I needed more sick days to give my body the breaks it needed at times, I couldn’t take them unless I wanted to lose an entire letter grade or, if I had two weeks of absences in a class in a semester, fail the class entirely. It didn’t matter how well I did at teaching myself the subject or succeeding even if I missed class, I would fail if I let my health keep me from physically being there. Many classes and church services (or other required events), I barely knew what was going on because my mind was so clouded with pain and trying not to be a distraction to those around me that I didn’t really hear anything going on around me.
But despite all the dietary restrictions, hardships caused by the strict rules they set (which for any other student without a chronic illness would really not have been that bad, to be honest), and my own broken, battered heart, God did work. He taught me that even though life is pain, it can still be joyous anyway. He taught me that others could benefit from my suffering if I was willing to take a step of faith in Him and keep a positive attitude with a willingness to share. It was hard to do that. I’m not an optimist by nature. If anything, I’m a realist who borders on pessimism in some cases. But if I hadn’t chosen to desperately cling to the Scriptures that say He plans everything and works it all out to the good of those who love Him, I would’ve lost my mind, I think. The stress I endured and the guilt I felt on days where I couldn’t attend events and knew I’d get a mark on my record for it or would have to attend the recording later was nearly unbearable, and if I hadn’t chosen to believe, regardless of my emotional state, that God had a good purpose, I wouldn’t have made it.
Gradually, God brought people alongside who, though they could do nothing to solve my physical ailments, were a support system I desperately needed. He brought me healing emotionally and mentally in many, many ways through those people so that, even though He didn’t take away my physical thorn in the flesh, He did show His mercy, power, and love in my life. He grew my faith through the trial, and because of what I go through on a daily basis, He is able to reach people through me that He could never reach otherwise.
In the same way that He used what happened to my mother, and to me as a result, to help those suffering around me, He also used my illness to bring hope, encouragement, and joy to others in similar situations or to those who had family suffering the same way. My illness, as hard as it is to bear some days, is a living testimony to His goodness. I know. That sounds really weird. How can He be good if He lets me suffer?
I struggled with that question constantly at the beginning.
Until I realized, it isn’t about me. It’s about His glory and His honor. In His sovereign wisdom, He knew many things I didn’t about the results of this illness, and He knows there are many more things I will likely learn as the result of being sick. Could He miraculously heal me? Sure. Has He chosen to? In spite of my pleas at the beginning for that, no. And I’ve benefited more from seeing Him work in spite of my weakness than I ever would’ve if He’d healed me nearly six years ago so that I could go on to pursue everything I wanted to with no hindrances. My character has been forged in fire because of this illness. I’ve learned lessons I never would’ve without it. I’ve watched God humble me because of it, and I needed that. I needed to recognize my place and my purpose, and I couldn’t do that without this illness. My own pride would have prevented it.
So, God in His infinite wisdom gave me IBS. Do I still hope that someday it’ll go away? Yes. I worry sometimes about the future because I know an illness like mine will make being a mother and a good wife very difficult, and I hate that. I want a family, and I want to give them all of me and my attention. I can’t do that on days when my illness takes over and lays me out on the bed wishing I could just die in a hole somewhere because I’m in so much pain. My mind and my body aren’t capable of giving people around me my attention or my love in those instances, and I hate that. But I also know this. Someday, if God chooses to bless me with a husband and kids, He’s going to get me through it. He’s never, ever going to make me face a trial that He is not going to walk me through. Sure, He might give me a trial I can’t handle. But never one that He can’t handle or doesn’t intend to handle as long as I choose to give Him control and walk step-by-step with Him. It might be a rocky road sometimes, but what’s on the other side will be worth it in the end.