I haven’t shared with many people outside of some family, my prayer warrior friends, and my church community, but at the end of October, I was diagnosed with Lyme Disease. The diagnosis was a huge shock, but at the same time, I was grateful to receive an answer as to why I had felt like I was dying for at least the last decade.
I felt validated in a way, because when you aren’t well for a very long time, and doctors can’t give you answers, you go from feeling crazy to frustrated to hopeless to cynical, over and over again. It’s a never ending cycle.
I guess it’s a common thing to be sent around from specialist to specialist, and suffer in silence for many years and even for a lifetime with Lyme Disease. That’s because it can be hard to diagnose due to lack of education, poor access to testing, and the insurance companies even refusing coverage of certain tests and treatments. It can also lay dormant, become active, and go dormant again.
So, I have much to be grateful for, in that God led me to a naturopathic doctor who nailed down this diagnosis within my first month of seeing her.
That said, the news hit me in an almost delayed kind of way, as I went through the stages of grief. At first I was in shock, and didn’t really have time to sit and think about it. Then I became distraught. When I played back the doctor’s warnings of potential treatment side effects, or tried to figure out the complicated schedule of pills, or worried about the expensive treatment that could go on for a year or more, I began to come undone. I thought, what if the treatment doesn’t work, and I’m suffering with this disease forever!
Soon, I became completely overwhelmed at the idea of having to deal with one more thing, and to be honest, I just cried for a couple of weeks straight. During that time, I felt incredibly fragile, and full of fear. I quietly battled why God allowed this, when He knows how much is already on my plate.
Then, one morning in a moment of utter weakness, I shut myself in the pantry closet, and with tears pouring down my face, I hyperventilated, and cried out to God through broken breaths and sobs. There in the darkness, I laid it all down- my confession of fear, my inability to do this without Him, and my petition for help.
In the loneliness of grief, Jesus meets us where we are, and reminds us that we are not alone.
In that closet of all places, where I store away the food that He provides for which to feed my family, He provided for me in the way I needed Him most. He became my Bread of Life and my Living Water, as He has been to me so many times before.
I asked Him to carry me from minute to minute, because I just didn’t feel like I could function. As I stood there, ugly crying and losing myself surrounded by spices and canned goods, I surrendered this diagnosis to Him, and in an instant, I felt His peace.
Have you ever had those times in life, where you just couldn’t do it, and you needed God to do it for you? Have you ever surrendered the hard, seemingly impossible thing to Him in the moment of being completely overcome and burdened?
Now I’m one month out from diagnosis, and a few weeks into treatment. In a strange new world, I’ve had to schedule my life around my medicine. When I eat and when I sleep now revolve around pill schedules, and detox routines. In the midst of it all, my shrinking capacity depends fully on God’s faithfulness.
I’ve also been kept so occupied with raising active kids, homeschooling, family life, running a business, holidays, outside responsibilities, friendships, and so on; that I haven’t really had time to sit down and research this diagnosis that has attached itself to my health history.
I haven’t had time to look into outcomes or obsess about possibilities. And to be quite honest, I believe that’s been God’s mercy and protection on me. In a way, I feel as though there is some kind of buffer around me, that I’m just not pulling the trigger on internet Lyme Disease rabbit holes or letting my guard down in a way that the enemy pulls me into a pit of sorrow and despair.
Soon after diagnosis, I had a friend pray over me that Lyme Disease wouldn’t become my identity. In the moment, it was as if the Holy Spirit was holding up a flashing sign saying “pay attention Jen, this is important”.
I knew just what God was speaking to, because I have struggled with diagnosis’ in the past. I mean, to the point that it was all consuming, couldn’t stop seeking information about it, constant fear, and somehow my identity becoming entangled in it.
I believe God is answering that prayer, for my good and out of His goodness, because since surrendering, I feel a lot of peace in the midst of this diagnosis. I feel held and known and seen, and the weight doesn’t feel like it’s all mine to carry.
That’s my faith I suppose, because God is faithful, and I trust Him. It’s also proof that God answers prayer. I am so grateful to those who are praying for me through this trial.
I’ve also seen God do miraculous things, not just in my life, but in my husband’s and my children’s lives too.
So, I say with full confidence, that God is the God of impossible things.
He does not work within the limits and boundaries of humans, and what man says is impossible, is possible for Him.
I have seen His glory when an addict was healed. God gave them freedom. I have seen His glory when a doctor said my son would never have vision in his right eye. God gave him vision. I have seen His glory when my husband said he didn’t believe. God gave him faith. I have seen in my own life when I should not have survived. God gave me life.
God turns lives around, gives vision to the blind, gives faith to the faithless, gives life to the dying, and turns a diagnosis into a testimony.
So what have I got to fear? He hears our prayers and sees our suffering. After all, He is the Great Physician. He knows our bodies even better than our doctors do, and that is something that we can take great comfort in!
If you, like me, are living with a diagnosis, then listen up….
When you feel alone in your pain and suffering, and when you feel alone in your fear and your grief, know that you aren’t. The enemy will attack in our trials, so this is even more reason to cling to God.
Call on Him, and surrender the diagnosis. Give Him your concerns and worries, knowing that even if it’s hard to get the words out, He already knows.
I know that He will carry you through each decision, each appointment, and every minute of your life, because you are His dear child, and He’s got you. He’s got me too. We are not alone.
We can trust Him, no matter what.
Psalm 139:1-18
O Lord, you have searched me and you know me.
You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar.
You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways.
Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, O Lord.
You hem me in- behind and before; you have laid your hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain.
Where can I go from your Spirit?
Where can I flee from your presence?
If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast.
If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me,” even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for the darkness is as light to you.
For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.
My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place.
When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body.
All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.
How precious to me are your thoughts, O God!
How vast is the sum of them!
Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand.
When I awake, I am still with you.