My heart is sick. I realized as I was out driving with Ben a bit ago, forcing myself to leave the house again and go run some errands and go for a family walk.
I feel like a part of me has died.
I have been writing about and reading/re-posting and writing about the first time I began to put to words the joy I'd experienced in the midst of my grief early on with dealing with my chronic illness, yet just reading words I had written, literally four years ago today, the weekend of November 3, 2010, a bit I wrote and shared about joy during a sermon series at The Rock during the first year of my illness, it is crazy I have gone back to that testimony and shared parts of it here and there in writing or in person when sharing parts of my story, but it's never hit me how it hit me today.
Maybe it's because today I've been facing a lot of reality. I finally sent a couple emails out to some back home and others that live elsewhere within my support system and that was good. But after, this feeling still lingered.
This feeling of my heart still being sick.
I don't feel like doing things I usually feel like doing.
I looked at all I was hoping to do today, and was reminded just now after taking a shower, something I heard in a support group recently, how anything I as able to do in a day, or how much I used to be able to do, I have to throw that out the window, I can't expect myself to be able to do that which I was able to before I got sick.
The first couple months especially are the hardest I heard that night, adjusting to a new capacity.
But, I didn't feel the release I was hoping to feel after sending these emails.
I still have the feeling of feeling not like myself, like I'm living life on the outside looking in.
I feel like the world is this place again I get to see but not enter.
I am tired of feeling this way.
I long for where I was even the first couple weeks when I got out of the hospital. I was on an up.
It felt like nothing could touch me.
Now, I have never felt more vulnerable.
I haven't been able to post much on social media.
I feel there are things and parts of my life I can't share and so even sharing the "little things" is hard because taken out of context, I feel misunderstood.
I feel overwhelmed when I think of some of the plans I've already made for this week, wondering if I will even be able to do them.
I feel tired, sick and tired of feeling this way, a feeling I have felt too many times before.
My heart is sick, my heart is hurting.
I dream and I wish this could all be over.
I would wake up and for once, everything is okay.
This is going to be a long road.
I remember hearing that weeks ago, but just now as we were walking through the garage to come up to our apartment, those were words that made me realize I couldn't agree with more.
I don't feel like this is a road I even want to go down.
I just want to live a normal life, like everybody else.
Is that too much to ask?
I don't understand sometimes like tonight, when I look at all the losses.
It hit me in the shower and though this statement is one I believe to be true, it is not comforting right now as this would have been a few weeks ago:
This only makes sense in light of eternity.
This only makes sense in light of that which He has allowed my heart and now my eyes to fully see.
I know how the story ends.
I know this is not the end of our journey or the end of this road.
Yet things that were once comforting, are now like worn out blankets that no longer offer any heat.
Tonight, my heart and my soul laments.
Cries out for change.
I am human. It is not fair. And I just long and wish for it all to be made right.
I long for my heart and my soul to be restored.
To feel alive again and not just for a day or two like I was beginning to several times this week, or would feel for a few hours, or even a day before it all came crashing down again.
I long to be made whole. Again.
For freedom from these losses.
I feel lost, empty inside.
Life as I knew it six weeks ago seems like a distant memory.
And I wonder if things will ever be the same.
How long, O Lord, will you allow your child to suffer?
How long, O Lord, will you allow all of these things to happen?
How long, O Lord, till complete peace and freedom re-enter our borders,
a time of freedom from medical appointments, and medications, and clinics, and hospitals, and tests, and therapists, and support groups, and doctors, and labs.
How long, O Lord, will you allow your children to suffer?
How long will you strip them free of the lives others are living all around them?
How long will you allow them to be barren.
How long will you allow them to continue to allow their losses to pile up.
How long will you continue to let them experience hardship others may never have to walk through.
How long, O Lord, will you keep your children in the wildnerness and wicked terrain of the desert?
How long, O Lord, will you keep them from entering the promiseland, keep them circling and circling through years of hardship and grief.
How long, O Lord, will you deprive them of their youth.
How long, will you keep them from experiencing the life they always dreamed as a couple, as a husband, as a wife, as a mother, as a father.
How long, will you continue to allow them to endure this bitter pill, this cross, that has already taken enough of a beating out of them.
How long, O Lord, how long.
Father, Son, Spirit, please come.
For your beloved's heart is sick.
Restore me to the joy of your salvation.
Restore to them all that the locusts have eaten.
Bring about miracles and things unseen and unknown that they could have never asked for or imagined that surpass their wildest dreams, that make all the years in the desert make sense.
Bring about that which only You can do.
You are our only hope,
we trust in your holy name.
Bring relief to your children who are suffering yet fighting to live for you.
Come, Lord Jesus.
And restore them beyond their wildrest dreams.
We thank you in advance for the things you have yet to do.
For the miracles borne of darkness yet to come to light.
For the ways you already have planned to restore to them all these years and illnesses and seasons of hardhip and grief have taken away.
For we know who you are.
And we know this is not how you have written their story.
We come to you now, for you are our only hope.
We thank you for who you are.
We thank you for taking care of your children, even in the times and the seasons in which they didn't fully understand.
We know that within a moment, within a flash, just like that, all our pain and suffering, when we are finally taken over into eternity, it will all seem like nothing compared to all that is there now waiting for us.
My heart and my eyes have seen of your glory.
I know I do not need to be afraid, this too will come to pass.
Be with us, Lord Jesus
Protect us from the Evil One and his wicked schemes.
We trust in You, for You alone are our Hope.
Let us not be put to shame.
For our salvation and honor depend on You.
And You alone are our Hope/
We trust in You and we love You.
Only You can make all this right.
