When our hearts and flesh fail us
Reflecting on 274 days of pain, fibromyalgia, and what it means for God to provide for us.
Invisible burning ropes wrap and tighten around my arms and legs. A slight wave of muscle aching returns every morning and again in the evening, like the faithful Puget Sound tide. On my desk is a reminder to set down self-reliance, followed by the Bible verse Psalm 73:26.
“My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.”
My flesh and my heart may fail…
At the beginning of 2023, I was on a different path. I had closed my small business and had just opened up a second location for a different company within the same industry. There was a lot of external excitement but more internal unrest.
Silently I was praying, agonizing, for things to be radically different. I missed seeing my family outside of work (even while working in the same building as my husband) and I was exhausted. By April, we were wrongly let go, and then we were working for a different company. There was an overwhelming feeling that what we had sweated, cried, and bled over was ripped from us.
I suppose it could be tempting to say that God put me in my place. I hear it all the time: comments like, “Be careful to pray for patience because God will shake things up and make you patient!”
While I do think that God sanctifies us through trials, I also know that God is, first and foremost, a loving God. He is not sitting up in unreachable places scheming up ways to show us who’s boss. We know his justice doesn’t work like that when we look at scripture. He came to us, as a man in Jesus, to speak with us directly and with deep compassion.
Luke 12:32 says, “Do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father has been pleased to give you the kingdom.”
He has been pleased to give. The Greek word here is eudokeō and it points to God actively and willingly giving us the kingdom of heaven. In this moment, God is still pleased to provide for us and abundantly. He is the perfect Father. If we are separated from God by sin, absent from perfect good, and we can give good gifts to our children, why would we think that the standard of perfect good (God) would not want to give us good gifts? (Luke 11:13)
Having the privilege to be a year ahead of that traumatic time, it’s a blessing to be where we are now. It has also been one of the top three hardest years of my life.
Grief and Acceptance
In May 2023, I began to feel unwell. I was getting headaches frequently. Suddenly, by July, I experienced a dramatic loss in energy (as in a can’t-get off-the-couch loss in energy). I visited the emergency room multiple times and was checked in for two days at a hospital with no luck. It wasn’t my heart, and they chalked it up to anxiety (I’ll skip the rant). By the third day before check-out, I began to feel pins and needles in my hands, arms, and then it spread to everywhere, from my eyelids and down to my toes.
I have experienced a range of hard-to-pin-down symptoms since then, over 274 days ago.
There has been extreme fatigue, bone-aching pain, pins and needles pain, burning pains, electrical shock-types of pains, and months of grief.
Grief. Acceptance. Grief. Acceptance.
“My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.”
My flesh has failed many times this year. I have had to fight for myself more now than ever before. Physically, this has looked like trying medications and getting off all medications. Recently, it has looked like removing all gluten, dairy, and sugar from my life. Thankfully, this is the first thing that has created a big impact on removing maybe 75% of my daily pains.
Mentally, I have invested time and money into trauma counseling and doing electromagnetic treatments (TMS) that have taken my depression evaluations from chronic levels (23) to small levels of depression (5)!
I have had to set down a lot of self-reliance these days. I have had to come to terms with what rest looks like and that I cannot physically do what I once considered to be normal activity. I’ve had to pick up even more dependence upon God. It is a daily surrender of recognizing my faults and rejoicing that He is not distant or unloving.
He is next to me as I hurt and ache. Jesus is with me even if healing doesn’t come in this lifetime. I rejoice that He is the strength of my heart, and I am not the one trying to hold all things together (although my pride tells me otherwise).
Grief. Acceptance. Grief. Acceptance. Tide waves come back in a steady rhythm. Waters show an exposed earth and bring back sediment that is neither good nor bad. It is simply inevitable.
Thank you for reading this personal essay. I am looking to expand this newsletter and would love for you to follow along. My other newsletter,
focuses more on motherhood and community. I’ve linked a newsletter from there below that talks more about the only depression treatment that has worked for me (after battling chronic depression for twenty years) in order to provide more information for those who may be interested.
I took an looking at tms (just did functional mri) and it's for horrible pain (3 years). I think the body revamps every 7 years, all cells, it's biblical. So we will get better, this isn't terminal.