Sometimes life is just a massive sucker-punch. The say senior year is so much better and that there’s a whole new world that opens up, a world full of endless possibilities and nonexistent restrictions. well… It’s not true. At least not in my experience.
For me Senior year has been responsibility and unbelievable amounts of stress.
No, not from the actual school part of it (haha). Senior year has been the easiest of all four years so far. I would even venture to say my easiest ever. I’m not learning anything new…. My hardest classes are GOPO(repeat of 9th grade civics) and AP French(Review of French 1-4). Honestly my biggest academic obstacle right now is reading Roald Dahl’s The Witches, which is a terrifying children’s story that, in movie format, would be rated ‘R’ and classified as ‘horror’.
No, the real sucker-punch is me. Just me.
See, as a Senior in high school, I am already being treated for medical problems. And most of my problems are just because I am who I am. I can’t help the fact that I have back pain and muscle tension because of the body God gave me. I can’t help that I’m taller then most girls and don’t have the blood volume to operate efficiently. I can’t help it that I have a severe pain problem…. And all of this adds up to dollar signs that I can’t afford.
Especially not with college breathing down my neck.
I did very well on the ACT. but it isn’t good enough. Because I don’t know how I’m going to pay for college. Yeah I have the capability to pay for college. but not all the other things being thrown at me. Medication, dr’s visits, ultrasounds, xrays… surgery. As a senior in high school it is finally dawning on me that one day my parents aren’t going to take the bill for all that stuff.
And yeah, I’m over-reacting and looking way into the future and making a mountain out of a mole-hill and all that stuff, but I can’t help but feel like a burden on society…. and when I get oodles of letters from colleges that look at me as a number and not an individual, I can’t help but feel like a drop in the bucket. The one leaf that fell on the perfect lawn. I feel like “That person”.
But what hurts the most is that I didn’t do anything to cause this.
I was born this way. This was all “Fate”. I can’t help but question God’s sovereignty. God’s plan. If He loves me so much, why was I born this way? Why is anyone born this way? I’ve heard in the song “We pray for healing, but love was way too much to give us lesser things.” I know in my head that in the end this is what is best for me, but like doubting Thomas I can’t believe it in my heart until it’s right before my eyes. I can’t rest until I know in my bones that it’s true.
And now I wonder when God’s promise stopped being good enough?
Maybe the reason why I’m going through hardship is to solidify in my mind how much I need God. Yet in a time when I want action, I’m just getting that still small whisper and I’m too anxious to hear it.
I wanna be healed.
I want to be the woman in the crowd that touched Jesus’ robe and was healed instantly. But sometimes it doesn’t happen that way. Sometimes You have to live in pain. Sometimes you have to be “That person”.
In a time of decision making, it seems I don’t have a choice.
I guess I just have to wait.
Laura Story has a story, from which that song was born. Are you saying you were born in pain? Or did the pain begin within recent memory? If the pain has come to you gradually over the recent past, then I would assert that it is not fate, assuming you do not have some onset of a rare malady like ALS or something. Sometimes pain is the body’s way of telling us we did too much or did something wrong. Other times pain is the body telling us we have not done enough. I don’t know what the cause of your pain is, perhaps you do not know either.
I noticed in my own day to day that the less I exercise the more my back would bother me. The more I workout, the less back pain I have. Yes there is a transitional period of soreness, but the body was created with the ability to adjust and adapt. This ability is referred to as conditioning. The transition is where they get the saying, “Pain is weakness leaving the body.” The reason varsity athletes must train so hard is not just to improve performance, but because strength is the number one way to prevent injury and pain. What do you do, or what have you done, to strengthen your body and your back? Just in case you’re wondering, ten toe touches won’t cut it.
For my own relief, I started going to Crossfit. The people and the attitudes that permeate Crossfit are more in line with rough and gruff, but they mean well and they are nice about being gruff. They get the job done. My back is much better off because of it. Everything is working better now. In my own never ever so humble opinion, the number one cause of pain and suffering is a sedentary life style and a lazy attitude. Look around at other Americans and you will see it all too plainly.
I can’t tell from your description if you are tempted to blame God for your pains and your situation, but I hope you know in your heart, at least in your mind, that God is not to blame. Like a caring Father, God walks with us, beside us. Imagine a father walking his daughter along the beach. If she stumbles on a rock and falls down, her instinct is to turn to her father and reach out for help. It never occurs to her to blame her father for her fall. Her father did not put the rock in that particular place just to cause the girl to fall. But her father is right there the whole time, waiting to help her get back up and to help her learn from the pain. Soon it won’t matter where God’s rocks have landed because the father’s teaching will allow the girl to dance gracefully around the most intricate pile of stumbles.
Faith is a very difficult concept, especially for smart people. Empirical and experiential knowledge helps us achieve a sense of intelligence and superiority over our material surroundings. Our modern, popular societal norms tend to heavily reward looking out for number one, my, me, mine! This is why intelligence correlates so closely with achievement, and achievement is indelibly bound up with self reward and self accomplishment. On the other hand, there is nothing in our culture that rewards selflessness. Faith is selfless and not bound up in the material, corporeal or the experiential, and therefore cannot be understood rationally or intellectually. Faith certainly cannot be understood through any disposition that is self centered or based on intelligence or achievement.
Faith is hoped for but not seen. And you know what they say about faith without works. I think that applies to healing as well. Faith that you will be healed is meaningless without works from you doing your part to facilitate your healing. God can show you how to help your physical body heal, but God cannot make you carry out the works that may help bring relief from physical pain. God opened the door to Crossfit for me, but God cannot make my body do those pull-ups! I have to do the work, or my faith in my own healing is pointless. If your pain requires medical intervention, then perhaps faith will play a role in how you deal with the recovery and the effort to prevent further physical dysfunction after the medical treatments have run their course.
Your road is difficult, and your intelligence will get in the way. If you think about it, the evil one does not have any weapons of his own. The only real weapon evil has is our minds and our intelligence, swayed to play tricks on us or to conjure conflict with others. Evil has no foothold in a heart filled with faith because faith is of God and evil cannot exist where God fills the voids. The faith filled heart must subjugate the impressionable intelligence of the mind. Remember not to use the tools of intelligence to try and explain or comprehend matters of faith. That would be like using a screwdriver to hammer a nail. Faith can only pick up when intelligence is left at the door of the heart. The human mind tends to say, “Show me and I will believe.” But God reminds us, “Believe, and you will be shown!”
Prayin’ 4 U! {:o)
Thanks for the comment, Gary! I was born with the pain. But I definitely see what you mean about intelligence getting in the way of faith. I”m the kind of person that needs to analyze everything and plan everything so I don’t make a mistake. Trusting God and having faith that his plan is perfect is kind of difficult when I don’t see the whole picture. But it’s true. God reveals himself to those who trust him. The trust has to come first.