How Could This Have Happened?

2 Corinthians 12:18 – Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me.

​There are many choices a person can make when treating chronic pain or illness. We’ve been diagnosed with another new issue, but we hope and pray that there will be a cure. So, we pray about it and ask others to do so. Then we schedule an appointment with our physician and they give us a referral to a new doctor. Our hopes run high as we think that perhaps this one will have a way to help us feel whole and be cured of our disease. But what if you see the doctor, believe God can use him to heal you, and nothing happens? You’re here. You’re nowhere. Your mind spends the rest of the day, unable to focus, still not believing what you heard. How could this have happened? Because even as the Apostle Paul experienced a “thorn in his flesh” we too may have to suffer. But our suffering doesn’t need to be spent asking “why” or trying to figure out if there’s yet another doctor we can see, or another procedure we can have or any number of ways to find that “cure.” We can use this illness to learn that God hasn’t given up on us. And he’s not trying to hurt us on purpose. He loves us more than we can know. And he has his arms ready to hold you through this storm.