When healing takes longer than expected, God invites us to find peace before our circumstances change.
Living with Fibromyalgia or Chronic Fatigue Syndrome has taught me that more effort isn’t always the answer. Sometimes the healthiest decision is to stop before your body makes the decision for you.
Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been reminded of that lesson all over again. Finding peace with chronic illness isn’t something that happens after life settles down. It’s something God patiently teaches us in the middle of the journey.
It’s been a couple of weeks since I wrote a blog… and there is good reason for that!
I am in the middle of “deckening” season. (Gardening on my deck! LOL.) Because it was so rainy and overcast, my plants required a lot of work. I was constantly moving pots in and out of the rain because they were getting too wet. Then I had to repot many of them.
By the time I got all of that caught up, I had a few pastry orders to complete. All the while, I was making lists for our trip to the East Coast in between those two tasks.
Now, here’s the thing. If all I needed to do was pack clothes for a visit, that would have been a simple matter.
However, my six-year-old grandson decided, as soon as he was told we were coming, that his grandma could teach him to temper chocolate! And this is not a small feat for an adult to learn, let alone a six-year-old! In preparation, he has apparently been watching numerous chocolate-making YouTube videos.
So now I know I am in trouble if I don’t deliver!
That meant packing equipment. And apparently ingredients too, because I struggle to find what I need in my own city, and I couldn’t imagine being that lucky in a smaller centre.
Then, because I’m very careful about my own diet and nutrition, I had to bring my own food for the flight.
The third thing on the table was that, two days after we arrive, which means tempering chocolate would be neatly squeezed into those first two days, we would be leaving on a tenting trip with my son, his wife, the aforementioned six-year-old, and his four-year-old sister.
Lastly, I had been buying random gifts around town and on my cruise, so there was all of that to add to the packing list.
The thought process that needed to go into this trip was, in short, monumental. At some point, I simply became overwhelmed because I wasn’t getting to the actual task of packing soon enough. I just had “too much stuff” to do before I even began… or so I thought.
Why We Can’t Simply Push Through with Chronic Illness
Now, here’s the thing that everyone with Fibromyalgia, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, or similar illnesses needs to know. We cannot simply push through. For many of us, waiting on God during chronic illness also means learning to respect the limits of the bodies He has entrusted to us.
Well… okay, we can. However, that almost always results in a crash. There is a very good chance I would have arrived with fatigue and likely a level of brain fog that would have affected the process of tempering chocolate, if not the chocolate itself.
And if you know me well, I NEVER mess with chocolate! LOL.
At some point, I came to my senses. I decided this wasn’t the way I wanted to show up at my son’s house. Not just for his family, but also for my own enjoyment.
So I stopped. I literally stopped for a day or two. I crossed several items off my to-do list. I left a few hopefuls on it, but they were crossed off two days later as well.
Then I rested my body and my mind. I actually watched an entire Netflix mini-series over two days! That was the best thing ever. After that, I was able to refocus and work on only one thing: packing.
Finding Peace in the “Not Yet”
As I reflected on those few days, I realized something important.
Peace didn’t come because everything on my list was finished. Peace came when I stopped believing I had to finish everything before I was allowed to rest.
Isn’t that how many of us approach healing too? We tell ourselves, I’ll rest when I’m better. I’ll have peace when the test results come back. I’ll finally relax when life settles down. But God invites us to something different.
Sometimes healing takes longer than expected, but that doesn’t mean God is absent. He is still at work, and there is hope during chronic illness because our hope rests in Him, not in a timeline.He invites us to rest in the middle of the “not yet.”
If you’re living in one of those seasons today, I want to encourage you. Waiting does not mean God has forgotten you. He is still working, even when you can’t yet see the outcome.
If this speaks to where you are today, I’ve created a free devotional called Hope in the Waiting: A Devotional for Setback Seasons. I pray it encourages you to find hope, peace, and God’s presence while you’re waiting for the next step in your healing journey.