Healing Prison

On Wednesday morning this week, I was highly upset. Tuesday night I had convinced myself that I would be able to get out of the hospital and back to camp. My heart was set on it. But the next morning when the nurse told me that my hemoglobin had dropped again, I knew I wasn't going anywhere. I was highly upset; I even cried a little bit, foolish as it might sound. I was so frustrated with my body for not recovering quickly, for not bouncing right back. I was so tired of being sick, so tired of just not being able to kick this crazy bug. And I was frustrated with God.

"God, we've all been praying so hard. I don't understand; why do you grant healing sometimes, and withhold it other times? What good is it doing anybody for me to be stuck here any longer? God, why are you saying no to my prayers? Is there something I've done that I need to confess that's blocking me from you? Why do I feel like my prayers are ineffective?"

Thankfully, God knew my frustration and my low spirits, and He sent me extra visitors that day. I've been blessed to have my friends from camp come to visit me every day that I've been in the hospital, but on Wednesday, I had visitors come three different times throughout the day, and it really lifted my spirits.

I didn't actually do a whole lot on Wednesday, except that I spent an awful lot of time thinking and reflecting on various topics. One of the things I thought about was being stuck in the hospital, and how sometimes that's how life is. Sometimes God places us in healing prisons-- situations that He doesn't take us out of that are frustrating, painful, upsetting, but ultimately healing. We don't always understand why, maybe we only partially understand, and sometimes we might not even see how it's healing at all, but God is faithful, God is love, and trusting Him means trusting that He's not going to allow situations that He can't use for good in some way.

I still probably don't know all the reasons that I've ended up staying in the hospital longer than I hoped, but I have figured out at least one. Later on Wednesday, I developed a fever again. And I realized that if I had gone back to camp and gotten a fever, I would have been a little bit scared, thinking that I wasn't responding to treatment after all, or maybe the diagnosis was wrong, and it just would have been a slightly frightening experience. God saved me from that; I was able to talk to the doctor when I got a fever, to be reassured that things were going to be alright. Again, I don't know all the reasons, but once again, through a new experience, God is teaching me to trust. He is teaching me to be still and know that He is God.