Perhaps, you have also had experience in the company of protracted illness. However disheartening, could that too be part of your spiritual journey? Can you possibly serve God as obediently, as effectively, when you are chronically ill as when you are well?
I would be remiss if I didn’t speak of the experience of chronic, debilitating illness. Early in the experience, it may be viewed optimistically as a passing inconvenience that temporarily denies you the things you used to do, and being in an outward sense who you are or used to be. But then, as time passes, you change and find yourself moving through life with a slower, more measured pace, both physically and spiritually. And it may even occur to you that it could be a condition, a situation that God allowed to beset you—but regardless, an experience or challenge that God could use to advance your spiritual perspective.
But if so, you might also hope or even expect to be restored—right?—ready to return to health, spiritually strengthened to pray for and strengthen your brothers and sisters. After all, even Job was restored after God inexplicably allowed his catastrophic experience and loss at the hands of Satan (as he suffered also his myopic, accusing friends). The Apostle Peter was also restored after Jesus gave permission for his “threshing” by Satan, likely his anxious, fearful retreat as he denied relationship with his suffering Lord. But these stories may not relate to your story—or at least not to your context, time frame, or experiential path. For some, restoration may be of another kind; it may mark a different, more personal and intimate spiritual course.
For many, illness or disability remains for a very long time, if not for life. After six years, mine remains a constant companion. There is sometimes no near-term or long-term physical restoration of body, capability, lost friends or assets. You could easily become despairing or depressed about it all—and at some point, to some extent, you unavoidably will.
But God sometimes may have another reason, another purpose for these inconvenient, often painful or debilitating changes of circumstances. More than a change in what you can do, and as much as a change in identity, it may also provide limitations that protect you from wandering back onto paths earlier walked, paths that now offer nothing more for you in your spiritual journey, and more, may form obstructions to greater intimacy with God. It may also attend a barren stretch or dark night period to be endured--necessary, perhaps, to keep you humbly moving forward in your journey with God. And although time must pass and understandings must be reached, illness can be and sometimes should be embraced as a valued gift from God.
First written: November 2006 – January 2007
© Gregory E. Hudson 2007
