Shall we accept good from God and not trouble?

Shall we accept good from God and not trouble?

--Job 2:10

This question seemed to leap off the pages of my bible today.

I tried to evade it.
But knew it was a question my very heart was forced to consider.

I have been in an intense period of grieving since the Saturday we came home from our honeymoon.

I shared with a few friends this week, I have cried, wept every day since we have come back.

I have reassured Ben everyday that it is not him. I love him deeply and am so enjoying being married to him! I love getting to spend each day with him, I love our new home and the beginnings of our new life together.

Yet, there has been a grief that has set in and not let go of my soul. A grief dealing with a reality I'm fighting to embrace.

As my counselor put it, grief occurs anytime things are not what we had thought.

She reminded me of the stages of grief and that our body goes through grieving cycles anytime we undergo major change or transition. Change is stressful, and it can be good change or bad change, our body doesn’t know the difference, it just knows things have changed and it is trying to adjust.

I guess the biggest rude awakening since coming back from the honeymoon has been shock and surprise that I am still not getting better.

Everyday to wake up and face the pain has stolen more of my hope each day. it is as if each day I enter this vicious tight rope, where I find hope rising and falling at alarming rates. So much that this week my heart couldn’t handle it anymore, I had reached breaking point.

The last the doctors told me, and I fought to believe, was that I would continue to heal and be fully recovered by the end of June, the end of the 6-8 week period projected from my last appointment with the neurologist.

Things seemed to continue to improve. And mostly I look back to the week of my wedding and my wedding day and cannot understand how much my health has gone back downhill since then.

My wedding day was a day with no pain. It was the first in a long time that I felt like myself again, fully alive and healthy. Normal. No pain. I still took it easy, but my heart was filled with hope, maybe I really am getting better. And better yet, my one prayer was answered, well after praying to be able to make it standing the whole ceremony, by other big request was to be able to dance at my own wedding!

It was a truly amazing day and all of those things happen. I attribute having no pain and truly being able to enjoy every minute of my wedding day totally the grace of God.

That along with being strategic the week of the wedding to have as much help as I could so I wouldn’t be limping into Saturday. One of my bridesmaids too off work the whole week and came in from Colorado on the Sunday night before I got married. That was a huge blessing and seriously, I would not have been able to do my wedding day or go through it pain free had it not been for her coming.

I was able to divide tasks and errands with her and conserve my energy and then I also had wedding “office hours” as we’ve been calling them while I’ve been sick, times in the afternoons where I would open up my house to the younger girls at church and have them come over and help me with wedding stuff or run errands for me. I had Jessica here all week and then Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday had 5-7 girls over each day in the afternoons, such a blessing. Without all of that manpower, I would have been in bad shape physically going into the weekend.

And then maybe add in adrenaline and excitement, maybe I underestimated the pain I felt that week.

The drive out to Colorado wasn’t too bad, was able to do hot and cold treatments on the way, and we rested a lot while we were out there, so I was able to still feel pretty good.

But ever since we came home, the sickness seemed to hit again in full force. I look back at the wedding day or even at pictures and it feels like an entirely different world and now I felt surrounded by darkness and the heaviness that this has brought. Just days after we returned from the honeymoon and once again each day has filled itself with my condition from moment to moment, calls to various doctors, working out medical leave with my employer, calling various places to get documentation on all my medical history the last four months, being bombarded with it all again.

Last week I felt lethargic and could hardly be out more than two hours before I had to come home. I felt as bad as I had in the first 4-6 weeks of this. I was beyond devastated.

I have been crying out to God, asking why. You are supposed to get better right? We never think we’re going to be sick for four months or on medical leave for work now long-term. you never think that the things associated with being ill for long periods of time apply to you, as I was shocked and nearly in denial as I had to fill out more paperwork for medical leave for my job, now over the 90-day short term leave and entering a new realm of long term disability. It didn’t even seem real.

I’m okay really, I’m okay.

But what if you’re not okay. I have wrestled with God with my fears and doubts and questions. This grieving left me all days except today, feeling hopeless.

Each time I hoped, it only led to more disappointment. And I realized I was fighting to accept and embrace what life looks like with this thing not going away.

Sure I was okay with it lasting through the end of June. You want to believe the doctors, know that there is end in sight. But it has seemed each time the carrot keeps getting further and further away. Like a cruel joke being dangled before my eyes as I keep trying to reach the carrot on the horizon. It seems so close, but as I keep traveling, the distance between it and I grows.

My tears have come from a place deep within. Cries of wanting it to be over. Wanting life to get back to normal. Feeling the weight of how much I want to do that I cannot do.

It has been incredibly difficult yet healing.

I don’t know all this is doing in my life and supposed to do but I do know that through it I am receiving more of Him. Not answers to my many questions, not a step by step how to get better and when, yet in my uncertainty, my faith has been put to the test as He is simply asking me to trust Him. To believe Him and to know that He knows the way that I take. Will I drink from this cup that has been given to me? Will I trust Him with the unknown, the things I do not want to embrace.

Shall you accept God from God, and not trouble? I realized this question Job posed to his wife was the same question posed to me this morning.

Words that lead to yet another searing examination of the condition of my heart, but this time, words that were able to create life, hope within me. Hope in God knows what, but He met me and gave me life today. Motivation and hope I haven’t had in days.

I found that while I knew getting married doesn’t solve all your problems, for the last 8 weeks I have been holding out hope that shortly after the wedding things would continue to improve with my health. Only to find the opposite. And now I found myself not wanting to continue now in my life as married with this sickness. The weight and the burden it has brought to our lives was like that unwelcome visitor that has now taken permanent residence in our home. This was not how I pictured it to be. I knew marriage was going to be full of challenges and the first few years would be a lot to adjust to and a lot that I couldn’t have read more about or prepared myself for in advance, that most of it would come through experiencing marriage.

Yet the interesting and mysterious thing about it is that while it is not how I pictured it at all, it is not at all a surprise to my glorious Father. So where is God in our pain and suffering? How do we make sense of it all. I think the answers to these questions are worth searching for, yet we find that we were never promised our comfort. Our health. security. That things will never change. No. But we were promised that we will never have to walk through the valley alone. That He is with us and for us. That He is always working towards our good. That He is especially near and sees and catches every tear that falls from our eyes. Intimately aware and knowing of every rush of heartache, every hope dashed upon the rocks, every longing fulfilled, every disappointment following anticipation, He sees and He knows all.

So again the question was posed to me again. A question of will I rise up and go without knowing with my Lord, face the day moment by moment, relying on Him to guide me as He may, drinking full the cup He has given me? Shall I accept good from God and not trouble? No, Father. For there is no life apart from You. In joy and sorrow, happiness and in pain, your love remains. Help me to accept the cup daily you set out for me. Moment by moment, daily trusting you, resting in the warmth of your presence, knowing You alone are my Healer, my Lord, My Jehovah Jireh, my Defender, my Advocate, my Peace.