TRUST

My life with lung cancer has been a game of Jenga, only the pieces are not wood, they are crystal. And this weekend, when it toppled over, it shattered. Pieces of myself, my husband, fears, anxieties, strivings, physical problems, energy……EVERYTHING shattered. It was a weekend where my neediness was just too much for my caregiving husband, a weekend where all the energy it takes to hold fast to faith and belief in healing nose-dived, a weekend where the dark tunnel swept down again to engulf me.

After an act of surrender, I am left to sweep up the remains. It is not easy when you are besieged with physical illness every other day. It is not easy when yet another friend (from Minnesota) has just died from lung cancer. It is not easy when the tunnel presses down and squeezes out fears that I would be best off in some mental institution. (Satan has tried that lie out on me many times and I buy into it every time)

I read in a devotional that faith is an act of will and belief is an act of the mind. I have had both, in great quantities, praise God. But the energy they both take has taken a toll. It has brought me to a place of TRUST. It is not the same thing. Trust is rest. It is an act of the heart, an act of love. The only thing I have to give right now is trust. Abiding. Resting. Trusting. It is a quiet act, a humble act. It is a place that is maybe where I should have been long before this.

I can’t read any more books about healing. I don’t have any more energy to rebuke Satan’s attempts to keep me afflicted all the time. All I have left is my Bible and a simple, “God, I love you, I worship you and I trust you.” I have lost none of my complete faith in healing. I have taken God at His Word and believe it shall be so. But I feel as if I have strived too hard to keep it at a level that almost made it into “works.” It has never been about the amount of faith I have….as if my working toward it would make it so. It has always been about grace. My healing is about what HE has done on the cross. That, and that alone. And, like salvation, all I need to do is simply accept it in faith. Jesus took my disease to the cross and redeemed it. I only need to sit back and trust Him. Abide in Him. Rest in Him.

Trust is hard. It requires a Type A person to do nothing except rest in the arms of her Heavenly Father and say, “Daddy, you promised me healing. And I will wait here in your arms until you make that known. I trust you to the ends of the earth that you are who You say You are. I rest here.”

And so it goes. Plodding through the dark tunnel once again. Learning to trust. And nothing more.

Prayers for this new phase of my life are welcome. It is a hard time of year to walk in the fog.