By Rebecca Vickery
Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. Romans 12:12 But if we hope for what we do not have, we wait for it patiently. Romans 8:25 The Lord is good to those who wait for Him, to the soul who seeks Him. Lamentations 3:25 I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in His Word, I hope. Psalm 130:5 Last week was the first week of school for us. With my older kids now in college, our homeschool class is the smallest it’s been in a while. I started the week with one doctor’s appointment. Monday at 10:30AM. I assured my students that this year should be different from last, with far fewer medical appointments. However, by Friday, as I headed out for the third time to the hospital for bloodwork, it seemed like my words had been in vain. My labs from Monday AND Tuesday resulted in incomplete testing, for whatever reason. On the phone Friday morning, I talked with patient support from the hospital and confirmed my suspicions that I would indeed be returning that morning. It would be my fifth medical appointment that week, and I would be adding three new medications from the two new doctor visits. It was a glitch, or human error. But there I was headed to the hospital again. To the waiting room again. On the way, the radio was tuned to The Light Radio Network, even though it would normally be connected to my phone for music. The message was about patiently waiting on the Lord and His timing. I chuckled and said, “Ok God, I’m listening.” Chuck Swindoll was preaching a message on bearing hardship with patient endurance knowing that God’s timing is perfect. I didn’t hear the full message, but my heart got it. I am now 3 and a half months post Lyme disease and Bartonellosis treatment. At first, the difference between how I felt with treatment and after was stark. I had so much energy and my pain levels were down across the board. I had some consistency from day to day, knowing my body and brain would be willing participants. But then I started taking on too much. And the consistency dropped. I was again requiring naps on a daily (sometimes more than daily) basis. The leveling out of my hormones was getting imbalanced again. My mobility was being challenged. Holdups from a lifetime of untreated Lyme disease and cat scratch fever (Bartonellosis) were making themselves known. We added some muscle spasms and connective tissue issues (hypermobility disorder) to the docket. My docket didn’t want to add those things, I wanted to be better. I wanted a fully clean bill of health. But these, too, were somewhat familiar. In the years following Juliet and Ian’s recovery, I had done research on recovery from Lyme Disease. After the obliteration of all the bad microbes, our bodies need to rebuild. I had previously reminded Juliet to be patient when she lamented that she was not feeling better yet. (She is doing MUCH better now.) Recovery takes time, I told her, and we need to be patient, as hard as that can be. Your body needs to rebuild. Strengthen. You’ve got this, you just have to be patient. So now I was the impatient patient. I had learned to listen to my body throughout the treatment and part of the recovery. But now I was back to not listening. To pushing through. To faking it until I make it. None of those things were helpful to my body. None of them were conducive to healing. They were, in fact, a surefire way to prolong the process. They stood in stark contrast to the beginning weeks of recovering where I was listening to the Lord and trying to not run on ahead. I was paying a steep price. But the Lord doesn’t tell us to be patient and wait for Him to frustrate us. He loves us. He knows better than we do. His thoughts are higher than our thoughts, and His plans are higher than our plans. “But LORD, I have things to do. Campers to sell. (Actually just the one.) A business to run.” All of my buts get in the way. I am reminded of James 4:13-15 as I write this. Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will travel to such and such a city and spend a year there and do business and make a profit.” You don’t even know what tomorrow will bring—what your life will be! For you are like smoke that appears for a little while, then vanishes. Instead, you should say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” I don’t know what recovery will bring. I don’t know one day to the next how my body will be responding. Yes, things are on a whole SO much better than they have been. However, recovery is almost never linear. There’s no line that goes from low point A to high point B without dips or declines. Yet, my hope is not in my body, it is in the Lord. What I do know is that if I wait on Him, He will renew my strength. He will renew my heart and my soul and put my feet on solid ground. I may not know what tomorrow holds, but I know who holds my tomorrow. Lord God, thank you that you hold my present and not just my future. Thank you that you can be with me in the waiting. Thank you that you are patient with me as I attempt things that are beyond my current capacity. Please be with all of us as we wait upon You. Help us to place our hope in you and your word. Help us to endure hardship with patience and renew our strength. In Jesus’ Name. Amen. Comments are closed.
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