That Pesky Healing Question

I never really thought that this question would have such an overwhelming influence in my personal life as it does now.

Yet now, all of a sudden it is the question of the hour, so blazingly loud, that I can't go one moment without hearing it's overwhelming thunder.

Poetic words aside, and several personal experiences of where this idea of healing comes into play, I see that I am struggling to come up with some answers on my own.

I meant to post something about healing about 4 months ago, when the year was fresh and I heard a plethora of, "Give me a double portion, give me healing, give me renewal" statements being made by the church(and by that I mean the church community as a whole, nobody specifically).

First off?  Who are we to ask for that?  What have we done to deserve blessings from God?

Just because we've made vain promises on the inspiration of a new year, we expect God to follow through, when we secretly know that we won't keep up our half of the bargain?

I digress.  As much vanity is in that thinking, I know it's not the only thinking.

Ever since my dad got sick 10 years ago, I have always struggled with the concept of healing, and for the longest time illness was just something that I dealt with and never truly understood as a "bad" thing.  It was really just a part of life. 

(And it is so much a part of my life, I have told my parents—multiple times—that I think God made me experience my father's illnesses so that I will be prepared for it in later life because I am bound to marry into illness...something I now regret saying in retrospect).

Perhaps that's why I grimace when people ask for healing over remedial things like diabetes, hypertension, and headaches.

But who am I to talk anymore, right?

I mean, I think a lot of it is stemmed from watching people struggle for years with Type 2 diabetes and then constantly eat garbage.  Why ask for healing when you're obviously doing a tremendous job of correcting the problem on your own?

Like I said though, that was the way I used to think.

When I handle healing I always think of John 9:1-5,  "As [Jesus] went along, he saw a man blind from birth.   2 His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents,that he was born blind?”  3 “Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus, “but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him. 4 As long as it is day, we must do the works of him who sent me. Night is coming, when no one can work. 5 While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”

I think, in order to properly demonstrate my argument here, I need to get my theological viewpoints out in the open, then, maybe I can make sense of what I hope to be a discussion.

Firstly.  I agree that illness and death are a natural consequence of sin.  But, as a student of science, I also believe in the concept of entropy, which(basically) states that all things are slowly decaying into a larger and larger sense of disorder.  Now, while I won't go into how science strengthens my faith, I do think it's a fair assumption to have two forms of evidence to back up my assumption.

To explain, if we as humans are bound towards entropy(which, spiritually, I understand as a consequence of the initial sin), our bodies are bound to be imperfect.  It is almost guaranteed that we are flawed from birth by virtue of the fact that our bodies are all mutated in some way, shape, or form.  

And these mutations only increase exponentially as we age.  So, naturally, the longer sin has a chance to pursue us, the longer it destroys us physically(I realize this is a HUGE theological assumption I'm asking you to make here, and again it's my belief, so feel free to disagree).

It's not the best way to pursue a discussion of the consequence of sin.  It's less emotional and more matter of fact.  But it makes sense. We were made perfect creations, and the second we allowed sin to take hold of us, was the second we allowed it to slowly kill us.

However, I also hold a second belief.  Yes, as humans we are bound to illness and death, but that certainly does not mean that God cannot work through our tribulations.  If we stop looking at our pain as, "Oh woe is me God did this to me" and more of a "I was born into sin by virtue of the fact that I am human" it becomes easier to cope with the struggle and less about hating God.

I agree, it is a self-depreciating thing to do, but as much as I find it hard to say the statement that these things are not the fault of God, we were given true free will when we sinned, and by that virtue, we chose to bring illness into the world.

But, like I said, if God can work through our unique circumstances to find beauty, is it necessarily right for us to ask him to remove the circumstance in the first place?  What if God chose for us to experience growth, and the only way to achieve that growth was by experiencing pain?  What if our testimony of struggling with cancer while still having faith in God is the only way someone experiencing our same struggles can ever experience the overwhelming love that is God?

God never promised us an easy life, He only promised to hold our hands and to intervene when it was clear that we wouldn't be able to handle any more.

I don't know why I struggle with the idea of asking for healing, but maybe that's because I understand it as a part of life and a method of growth.  And it saddens me that I cannot deal with death in the way that most deal with it.

Unfortunately I see death as "right of passage" so to speak, that, while it is painful, is inevitable and therefore pointless to obsess over.

I've experienced death a lot,  I've had multiple family members die of cancer, so maybe I'm immune to feeling pain over it anymore.  And while I do believe that the grieving experience is important for everyone to handle with the utmost care—and memory of someone should never be forgotten—reflecting on the past will do nothing for a person that seeks to move forward.

But empathy is a trait I am slowly working towards achieving.

Here's where my perspective in this whole healing game comes into play: I might be getting sick myself.

It's nothing serious.  And I don't even know what it is actually.  I'm convinced that I have reactive hypoglycemia, which occurs after I eat and either means that my body doesn't know how to react to the sugar I'm putting in my body or it produces too much insulin.  It pretty much means that I have low blood sugar all the time, and I have to be extremely careful not to let it get too low.

To be frank, I'm tired all the time.  I'm slightly faint about 40% of the time that I'm conscious.  When I exercise if I even feel minutely faint I have to stop, and I have to always be sure that I have a snack around me.  What I hate most about whatever is wrong with me is that no matter what I eat I get tired, but if I don't eat I know that I will feel even worse.

And for me—the person who worked out moderate-intensely(oxymoron, I know) 3 times a week and made sure that everything she put in her body was fairly balanced between protein and carbohydrates—it was a shock to me that I even developed the symptoms in the first place.  I mean I'm not obese, I exercise frequently, and I eat a lot healthier than most of my peers.  And even after doing what "diabetes" experts said to do, I only felt slightly better after eating things packed with protein.

So, I did what any self-righteous first-world Christian would do: I cried to God about how I didn't deserve this struggle considering how good I was taking care of his vessel(myself).  And, after a day of self-pity, I realized what I spoiled brat I was being.  Am I dead?  No.  Am I dying?  Not in the near future(God-willing).

There's a family history of diabetes in my family, I should have expected it, to be honest.

But it was like a smack in the face for me.  And here's me being honest.  Everything that I've done since my freshman year of high school was to avoid all of the illnesses that threatened my family, and my obsession with health was, I now realize, a way of paying my dues to a way of avoiding fate.  So that's why I was "woe is me".  It was my way of being, "I did all these good things God, so why did you punish me?"  And I admit, I do obsess over it.

But I feel like I'm trapped in my own body, and every time I think I've somehow escaped it it pulls me in, telling me that my body is weaker than my own will.  I wish I wouldn't obsess over it, but it's hard when it affects something that is so essentially a part of my humanity: comfort, food, alertness, and most importantly—control.

And as much as I understand that my pain may very well be a part of a bigger plan that involves me ministering in some way, it's hard to stay strong when you're being attacked physically.  Mentally, you can always control on some level; but physically, it's like you've lost to yourself, and the only one who can win is either God or your body, but never yourself.

This all brings me back to my question of asking for healing.  I think that my illness, whatever it is, is part of a bigger picture that might very well might only be achieved by my current struggle.  And if that's the case, I am not comfortable asking for the removal of it, but I'm not against asking for strength to endure it.  And I think, perhaps, that there's a fine line between the two.

But, like all things, the execution is much harder than the intended plan itself.  As much as I may convince myself that I am going to stay strong, and that others should do the same when they endure death or illness, I also admit that human nature will incline us to give up daily, to run to everyone but God for support and when we do turn to God it's inevitably to blame him.  

And I—like I think everyone must deal with on a personal level—must learn what exactly that balance is, and what exactly it means  for them, not to blame God and not to blame their circumstances either.  

Does that mean acceptance?  Or changing fate?  Or does that mean ignorance of the problem completely?

The Lies They Told Me About College, And The Truths It Revealed

I'm posting out of order(of course you wouldn't know that).  I say that mostly because I had a post I was supposed to post a couple of weeks ago about relationships, but I have more mental energy to post this than finish the other one.

See this is what college does to you, confuses your priorities.

(Oh, was that just me?)

Anyways, I wanted to talk Christian Universities.  Let's talk College.

And let's talk about some of "experiences" that people told me  about both.

I'd like to get some things clarified.

Yes, college is a lot fun.  College has been a lot of spending time with myself friends and discovering myself.  And yes, at a Christian college I learned about God(a lot).  But no one ever told me how emotionally and mentally draining it's going to be, and just how much homework I would have to do, and how that one C on a test that never bothered me in high school now seems like the difference between Grad school and no Grad school.

Homework kills(as does that hour and half long class that I have twice a week that I just can't stay awake for), midterms KILL, and science exams?

They're pretty much the bane of my existence.  But I digress, mostly 'cause, believe it or not, I adore science(I just suck at tests).

The truth about college?

Popularity doesn't exist.  However, "friend groups" do and, honestly, sometimes they seem like they can be just as rigid.  Still, people are awesome and genuine, and anyone is almost guaranteed to find those few people that just understand you like no one else can.

At my school, males are a semi-rare species, and the ever coveted "male friend" is sometimes harder to achieve over the "boyfriend".  (Mostly because the over-saturated in female attention "male species" can't get it through their thick skulls that girls can hang out with them without flirting or wanting to marry them).

And spiritually?  When they said I'd change spiritually and my faith would grow.  I never imagined that my life would be the way it is now, in the spiritual sense.  I've never struggled so much spiritually, I've never been so lonely, I've never been so independent in every sense of the word.  I'm learning how to be my own person, and honestly, it's terrifies me.

It's this idea of second naivete that is now forever nailed into my heart .  I thought I knew an awful lot about God, and then I came to APU and realized I knew absolutely nothing about God, and the more I learned about God the more I realized that there's so much more I don't know, and maybe can't ever know.

It's 100% true that it's harder to be a Christian at a Christian University.  I suddenly have to make time to read my bible, and have prayer time, and chapel isn't nearly enough to sustain me even though I convince myself it does.  I have to make myself go to church on Sundays(especially the ones that I have off from "work").   And sometimes, all I want is that older mentor pushing me to do those things.

And, I'm no longer special around campus for being Christian, so I can't get the drive of being unique(as a Christian) at a Christian University because every one else believes in God too.  And, to add to the struggle of individuality, almost daily I get stuck in my schools bubble and forget the fact that the world does in fact not revolve around me and my college and the 20-somethings that attend it.

But I got lucky.  And as cliched as it is, community is a real thing that I take for granted here.  People really do want to get to know you and your walk with Christ.  Everyone, for the most part, wants to meet new people. I am thankful everyday that God introduced me to genuine people who readily admit their imperfections and daily strive to be better people and better followers of God.  I love that I am convicted that my walk needs improvements.  It's great, this insecurity of not feeling like a perfect Christian, because then I always strive to be better. And maybe, maybe we all need some level of spiritual insecurity to keep us tethered to God.

I've had such deep talks with people about discussions I could never imagine be a reality between Christians.  We don't grimace at talk of hell or homosexuality or sex or whether or not predistination is actually rooted in scripture.  We admit we don't know the answers and all seek to find them as a body of believers.  And isn't that what God asks us to do?

However, I will be the first to admit that my school is no where near perfect, and there are a lot of people that aren't what society would call perfect Christians.

I know people that party, and smoke, and have premarital sex.  I still hear curse words.  I still see more skin than any unmarried Christian should reveal in public(go ahead, beat me now for saying this.  My views on dressing conservatively will not change for the culture of Southern California).  I still run into people that believe that a relationship with a man is better than any relationship with God.  It's not that they only sort of exist in clusters, there's a lot of people that deal with at least one of these on a daily basis and don't see it as a sin.

Sin.  That's a question that's get's grayer every day.  And honestly, I don't see that bright light at the end of the tunnel on this one.

Now let's get honest about my walk, and how that works into this whole college thing.

I am in no way perfect.  I read my bible twice a week.  I don't often pray other than in chapel, and every time I walk into my philosophy class or read my bible now I always find problems with my faith that I know will get answered if I dig into my word, but sometimes I simply don't want to.

And I realize that this is a very unhealthy place to be spiritually.

For how can you fight the struggles of the world without the armor of God's word?  I could probably solve a lot of my problems if I talked with my parents(or any mentor) about it, but I'm never willing to do that either(because I'm stubborn, and want to deal with my problems on my own).

I let my social life and my vain crushes get in the way of my walk, and they gained more seniority in my life than God did.  And I let my own life seem more important than others.

And this semester, I'm trying to fix all of that.

But old habits die hard.  

I'm still struggling with all of it.  I still feel just as selfish, but with God I'm allowing myself to let the words of others become more important than my own.  I just want to be a friend to those that I'm surrounded by.  And God, I know he's preparing my heart for my future: in life, in career, in marriage.  And it excites me, but at the same time, it makes me incredibly nervous.

It's a daily struggle of truly giving my future to God, without the anxiety.

I shouldn't have been surprised, then, when I suddenly found the desperation for God that I was striving for.

And it sucks, guys, really.  It genuinely hurts.

And I probably should have an accountability partner, but I think God's calling me to do this by myself right now.  Because, and I've learned this only recently, it's really hard leaning on your peers when they're trying to get their lives figured out too.

And maybe God calls every one to not rely on their peers at some time in their life.

Maybe we are never truly dependent on God until we can't find dependence in others.

And for me, this year has been a lot of reevaluating my perceptions and priorities about things.

In my personal walk, it's learning to ask questions to God.

It's looking at serving others, whatever that looks like to the individual I'm talking to; letting my words and my love reflect the God that created me.

It's looking at marriage and dating like something that mirrors God and the church.

And in everything, this overarching idea that "nothing is about me" overshadows all of this.  If I look at friendship as bettering the life of my friends, dating as bettering my partner, service as being support for those that I work with.  Things get easier.  My personal motto that "Love is Sacrifice" becomes a lot easier to swallow and when I delve into selflessness, all my actions become about being selfless, and it's a lot easier to say no to temptations that incline me to be selfish.

And for this revalation I say thank you to APU.  I never would have realized any of this without the school.  But I'd be lying if I said any of this was easy to realize or easy to do once I realized what I had to do.  But, thankfully I attend a school that allows growth without judgement.  To be honest I don't know how to end this, but I do know one thing.

This year.  It's going to be a struggle.