Struggling with God, Forty, and Fish

I turned forty and thought this was going to be the year I grew up, started taking vitamins, ordered grown up facial products, and began working out. Instead, I found myself praying just to make it through the day. Life can certainly blindside your intentions.

Amidst my birthday celebrations our daughter’s appendix ruptured. This was honestly the worst of what we’ve endured, yet it was the event in which I felt the most peace. I knew what she had. I knew we had no other option besides surgery, and I knew this was a routine procedure for her surgeon. Devastated our child had to endure such a traumatic event, yes, but confident we would bring her home to heal. I felt at peace as we covered her in prayer and sent her into surgery.  It was what would follow that would challenge me most.

Post surgery she developed a bacterial infection that has plagued her for months. While laughing and playing with friends, I often find her curled in a ball “taking a break” on the couch. I push her out of the car for school each morning knowing she is struggling. Watching your child try to be a kid while not feeling one hundred percent is hard. I find myself placing my hands on her tiny scars while she sleeps and asking for healing. While I struggle greatly with my inability to fix this for her, I turn my thoughts to God. I consider how much I love her, and then I am overwhelmed with the consideration of just how much He loves her. She is after all His creation, loved more by Him than even me. I work to find peace in this fact while praying for total healing and His strength to carry her through.

Around the same time as our daughter’s surgery, I began having pain and numbness on my right side. I was diagnosed with shingles. Although I had no rash, neurological signs pointed to this as a possibility. Seriously? Turn forty and get the shingles? Happy birthday. I endured nauseating meds and waited for relief. Instead it got worse; this was not shingles.

As Christmas approached my daughter and I powered through each day. She with debilitating pain, and I with increasing pain and numbness in my arm, leg, and face. We began seeing a pediatric GI for her and as I continued to pursue with my doctor, the symptoms grew, and so did the seriousness of his orders from MRIs to neurology appointments.

Here was the worst part about it. The waiting. From November to February I waited for appointments and I waited for answers. All the while doing what each of us do and none of us should, Google. Googling my daughter’s illness and numbness on one side of your body does not yield great results. So I did the only other thing I knew to do during the waiting…pray.

As I prayed through the waiting, I struggled in my faith, yet this struggle resulted in the tangible hope and strength I so desperately needed. I was starting to get scared, and I saw my husband starting to get scared. We knew what some of the tests they were running were looking for, so we got on our knees and prayed. Amidst my prayer however, I became more consumed with panic than peace. Panic in the unknown, frustration in a lack of healing for my daughter, and fear in an uncooperative body had consumed me; I knew this was not what God wanted of me or for me in the waiting. I turned to the Bible for His Word and what I saw was repeated messages of His unfailing love, the promise of His presence, His peace, and His strength.  

The more I read and the more I talked to Him, the more I began to sink my teeth into what I knew as truth – that no matter the diagnosis, if this was where my earthly body decided to take me, I would not be alone nor would my family. Every time I stopped and turned to Him, when I was still, I felt a tangible peace.  Apart from Him, panic, but in Him, peace. I began trying to release each of the what-ifs to find peace not just in prayer, but in the waiting, yet another struggle emerged. How do I find complete peace when I am emphatically telling God the results I desire and still terrified He will not deliver? My new struggle became in prayer itself! I now began to search the Bible for how to pray. I encountered countless examples of Jesus telling us to pray for God’s will and it will be done. I did not like that. Terrible, I know. Seriously, I did not like what I was reading… in the Bible… from Jesus. Your will be done? What if it’s not my will? What if I don’t like His will?  I was literally having trouble saying the words Jesus was telling me to say with the promise that God would deliver. I began searching for Plan B. Is there another option for prayer, one that will bend the creator of the universe’s hand toward my will? Was I misinterpreting this?

In my struggle, the more I prayed, the more I read, and the more I sought His truth the more I understood. First, I had to come to the realization that what my daughter and I were experiencing was not of God. Now this is debatable, but the Bible shows me over and over God’s will for his children is good, all the time. I am of the opinion that God did not give my daughter an appendicitis or an infection. Her earthly body malfunctioned. Whatever is happening to me is not of God either. Second, I had to wrap my head around the truth that God’s will for me is good all the time. He tells us life on Earth will not be easy, “These things I have spoken to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world,” John 16:33. I began to see through the eyes of a parent. That just as our will for our own children is good, His will for us is good. That means I can completely trust in His will. That ultimately, His will for me is “immeasurably more than anything I can ask or imagine” Ephesians 3:20. This gave me the ability to begin releasing my fear and my desire for a controlled outcome. I began to fully surrender each what if in prayer. Finally, I came to the conclusion it is okay to not want your current situation, to pray boldly for your will, but I also became comfortable in closing my prayer with the words, “Your will be done,” and fully trusting that His will in the end was better than my own.

Finally, the appointment approached. The one for which we had been waiting and felt may give us an answer. Shawn and I held hands and were ready for the diagnosis. The neurologist came in. His diagnosis? Ciguatera. He believes fish I ate while in Jamaica for my birthday poisoned me. Come again? Ciguatoxins are apparently some of the most potent biological toxins known on Earth. The side effects can be pretty nasty involving neurological symptoms that can last months, even years. I cried. I’ll take it. I’ll take fish poisoning. What’s next? We hope it is in fact Ciguatera as you can’t test for it, and we wait. Oh, and you avoid coffee and alcohol as that exacerbates it. Please stop!

I am grateful for fish poisoning, but as I reflect, I think I am more grateful for the waiting. In the waiting I struggled with my faith, and as a result, I experienced God in a very tangible way. I have no idea when my daughter will experience healing, whether my diagnosis will stick, nor do I know if the symptoms will dissipate any time soon, but I have discovered that through prayer, through a relationship with the very One who created me, there is hope, there is strength, and there is peace that we receive from Him in difficulty. Walking alone since November would have been unbearable, but I do not walk alone.

I also have no idea what struggles life ahead holds for this family of four either. Forty so far has been pretty interesting, but this experience has laid a foundation in my faith for which I am grateful. I recognize that what I have learned now may be a lifeline for me further down the road. There is much I continue to struggle with in my faith, and I will continue to seek answers, but I have come to rest in the fact that I can only see what is in front of me. As such I don’t always like the immediate timing or the answer, but I have hope in the one who has seen my life from beginning to end. And I have trust. Trust that despite my limited understanding He is working all things for good. He created me, He loves me, and when I look back over my life I can see clear evidence of His mercy and goodness. The more I experience with my eyes open to this truth and with God beside me the more I am able to see Him at work in my every day struggle.

And without coffee and wine, the struggle is going to be real.

“And we know that God works all things together for the good of those who love Him, who are called according to His purpose.” Romans 8:28