Life In The Unexpected

Throughout the many years I have dealt with health issues, one of the things I have experienced many times, is an unexpected decline or bad news. You go to a routine doctors appointment, and 10 minutes later you are being told you need to be admitted to the hospital. You go for a routine test, and the results come back worse than ever before. There are many scenarios similar to this that can greatly affect someone’s life and their future. 

With dealing with bad news and unexpected decline, I have learned how to manage and deal with this. Some of the ways I have dealt with this all relate to coping mechanisms and certain distraction or grounding methods, along with knowing God has a plan for everyone and everything. Knowing this helps me during these unexpected times where you aren’t prepared for anything, because you remember all of this is part of God’s plan for us. We have to put our faith and trust into God and know he is doing everything for a reason. 

It is most definitely not a coincidence that those of us on the receiving end of medical care are called patients. The patience required to deal with all the medical mayhem of a chronic illness is prophetic. I often find myself, like Job, asking, “How long, O Lord?” If the flu is a sprint, a chronic illness is a mega-marathon. It requires you (and your family) to be patient, diligent, tenacious, ferocious (at times), compliant (at other times) and just about every other emotion on the spectrum. 

The patience and endurance that is part of this life, in addition to all the other symptoms of a chronic illness, is where that faith and trust in God enters in. When you are in the throes of your 17th day in a row of feeling utterly lousy, yet still trying to maintain some sense of normalcy by doing school and talking with friends, you have to trust in God and your faith that there is the other side of this nightmare somewhere and that God’s plan in all this will someday be clear. Whether that manifests as being that person who can help someone else who suffers with this down the road or being the person who finds a cure for this nasty disease, I know God has a plan for me. For now, it is mine to trust, persevere and be as patient as I can be while I live out God’s plan for me.

For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. Jeremiah 29:11