Good thing I dabble in sports euphemisms because this one is perfect for the topic, which is about those times when life throws a practically impossible pitch that you weren’t expecting. Such as a sudden death in the family or a diagnosis of cancer. God has allowed me (though hasn’t caused me) to develop a debilitating condition in my fingers. It’s most likely osteoarthritis, and I’ll find out officially from a doctor soon. My digits have knots on the joints, and my right middle finger has already become slightly deformed. My fingers gradually got worse and now my job of writing is sometimes excruciating.
Unless God decides to do a miracle, which I believe he might, I’m looking at a whole new level of chronic pain that will worsen until I finally go to sleep and wake up in the presence of Jesus. This disease is so serious, I will qualify for disability; but I will continue to work and write no matter what.
God has blessed me with a lifetime of good health, though I did experience enormous pain for many years due to endometriosis. When I finally had everything related to the pain removed, I felt like a little girl. It was so freeing to be released from the prison of pain I’d been locked in for so long.
I believe that when God allows a hardship it’s because He has a blessing bigger than I would have been capable of receiving without having gone to that particular school of suffering. Even though the pain is so bad that when I wrote my first article this morning, I experienced the strangest thing—tears just streamed constantly down my face because of the pain–I am as confident now that I’m in the palm of God’s hand as I was before my health took this devastating turn.
There’s a whole lot that I’m ignorant about, but two things I do know:
- Dipping your hands in hot paraffin wax greatly relieves joint pain, and I’m going to invest in a small paraffin bath tomorrow; and
- No matter what life throws at me, I’ll never catch God looking the other way when I need Him (which is every millisecond of every day).
Job 1:21
New King James Version (NKJV)
21 And he said:
“Naked I came from my mother’s womb,
And naked shall I return there.
The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away;
Blessed be the name of the Lord.”
Daily Pep Talk 