He sees our tears...

I was having a particularly rough time. I had seen so much progress...then. Then I don't know what happened. I started feeling odd one night. I stopped doing my exercises for a few days, resting more and trying to give my body time to get past this. There's this difficulty with an unpredictable disease - while I want to feel like I can control it or blame a reoccurrence of symptoms on eating this or that, exercising too much, stressing out, or not relaxing enough etc, trying to figure all of that out and connect all those dots can cause unhealthy stress in and of itself! If I just KNEW it really didn't matter, I would probably stress less trying to figure out what might be causing a mini relapse or an increase of symptoms!!! But there is part of me, that while I understand there is the very real unpredictable part of this disease, still thinks I must be able to do something to help stop it, aggravate it, etc. I'm currently still trying to wrap my mind around my role in all of this. What to focus on, what to do, and what to let go of.

Anyways, that was all a side note. The point was, I was having a rough time. It had been about a week and rather than getting better or even staying neutral, I felt like I was continuing to dip down. Sometimes I would feel better from the dip, but I still felt like there was a slow decline. I had begun to feel more and more that my spasms were closer to returning. It had been around 2 months since having a spasm. I am so grateful to be rid of those things! Anyways, as always, God so faithfully met me.

My husband had an errand to run, I needed to go to the lab, and we had a grocery list! So we piled in the car to run around with Dad, while I stayed in the air-conditioned car of course! As I waited for my husband, I read through a devotional from Andy Elms that totally blessed me. It reminded me that God has a purpose and a plan. There are greater things at work here!! Thank you, God for that encouragement!

Then when we got home, I got on my recumbent bike. As I rode, I cried. I want to get better, I don't want to be slumping back. Yet as I rode, I could recall God's hand so faithfully and continuously guiding us on this path. I thought back to when I was in the hospital. That first night they gave me steroids was horrible. My body reacted poorly and spasmed and seemed to be revolting. I was so scared. What if this was Lyme and they were giving me the wrong treatment and that is why I was getting worse instead of better? That night in the hospital bed, I felt like God wanted me to stick it out with the steroid treatments, "Can you trust me with this?" I did. And I got better! I felt like that was being asked of me again, "Can you trust me with this?" Yes, I will!!!

Sometimes I feel so discouraged, yet there is this hope, this anchor. Faith...faith is the substance of things HOPED for. Anyways, here I was crying, exercising, trying to have FAITH and I get an e-mail from my cousin. She starts telling me how she was praying for me the night before, she had a VERY strong pull to PRAY NOW. She went on to say that she didn't know if there was anything specifically going on at that time, but she felt it strong and she obeyed!! She went on to say that God loves me and I won't be dealing with this forever, etc etc. I sat there in AMAZEMENT!!!! I don't know why, cause God is always SO faithful, but it still leaves me in awe!!! Here I am, little ole' Chrissy crying on her recumbent bike and God sees!! There are MUCH bigger fish to fry out there, people with much more pain and hardship, yet I still mattered to God. My pain still matters to God! In fact, God saw ahead to this moment and had my cousin praying for me and had her share that with me at JUST.THAT.MOMENT. God sees. God knows. He's faithful. Can you trust Him with whatever is overwhelming you today?