Trust in My Weakness

Today is a day of I wants.  I want the doctor to come see me.  I want to go home. I want to be able to breathe easy again.  I want to laugh without getting winded.  I want more reasons to laugh.  I want there to be a cure for CF. I want the fight to be over.  I want to want these things and not feel selfish or self pitied.  I want to want these things and for it to be okay to stomp my foot and cross my arms to make it happen but, most days I don’t get what I want. 

The truth is I am just tired of being weak.  I am tired of trying to be strong, trying to hold back the tears, the doubts, and the questions.  I don’t want to question it any longer.  I don’t want to wonder why I have to do this anymore.  Is being in the hospital almost every month somehow good enough?  Is that life good enough?  Is that battle worth continuing to fight?  Am I ever going to get to rest? For just a few months get to forget how ruthless this disease is? 

Several weeks ago my devotional spoke about weakness, about how weakness stirs up God’s compassion.  We don’t always get to understand why He makes the choices He does, but we do get to rest in the understanding that God knows exactly how we feel and exactly what we are facing and in some instances He may be the only one who does. 

“Do not compare yourself with others, who seem to skip along their life-path with ease. Their journeys have been different from yours, and I have gifted them with abundant energy.  I have gifted you with fragility, providing opportunities for your spirit to blossom in My Presence.” –Sarah Young

I have been challenged to see my fragility as a gift, this harsh reality as a gift, this struggle as a gift.  Over the past few weeks I have been trying to figure out just what that looks like.  Being in the hospital has made it that much more of a reality.  So here is my confession, I am not strong, I will never be athletic, I can’t hold a steady job, I feel like I have no opportunity to be there for anyone else because everyone is trying to be here for me, but I am not gift less.  Sometimes my situation sounds hopeless or my life compared to the cost would be considered worthless to others, but I am gifted!  I am weak!  My body fails me every day, but guess what?  My God doesn’t.  I have Cystic Fibrosis, I have diabetes, I have liver disease, and the doctors think they hold my fate in their hands, but they don’t.  My God does.  I have survived Cystic Fibrosis thus far; I was the recipient of a liver transplant the doctors thought I wouldn’t get.  I lived through cancer; I have lived through my entire blood being replaced.  I have lived through infections that kill most people.  I have lived through enough to know that my life means something. And that something is enough, it is enough to fight for, enough to make this all worth it.  When God steps in to save your life, you don’t get to question if your life is worth it.  His saving grace makes it worth it.  That is proof that this is all going to be worth it.

I saw this quote today “Is what you are living for worth Christ dying for?”  I thought about it for a while and I realized sometimes you don’t get to know the specifics of what you are living for.   For me it is all about living in general.  All I know is that God has asked me to fight for my life. So I am fighting for my life and trusting that there is something big enough in this world to be worth all of the pain, all of the heartache, all of the confusion, all of the fighting, there has to be something that is making this all worth it.  There has to be because why else would God ask me to live this life?   Cystic Fibrosis isn’t the only disease out there that makes us question who God choses as His soldiers for those battles. 

We fight to live despite the odds because the truth is the odds are just a number.  We fight because we are human and we want to live.  We fight despite everything because we all want to believe, to hope that there is something greater than us who is fighting for us too, someone out there who can create a miracle and give us a second chance, even though we don’t deserve it. That person is God and trust me, He knows you, He knows what battles you are facing, and He isn’t about to go anywhere.