My Ramblings about Healing

As a Christian, I’ve done a lot of thinking about my beliefs on healing in the last few months. Divine healing. Miraculous healing would be another word for it. Or supernatural.

There are dozens and dozens of scriptures about God’s healing. I’m not going to get into all of them here because the point of this particular ramble is not to argue the theology of whether or not God’s healing is possible. As a Christian, I know and believe all of these scriptures. There is not a single doubt in my mind that God can and will instantaneously heal me if he so chooses. I pray for that daily.

But I also believe there’s more to the story. As a Christian, I have also witnessed instances where God doesn’t heal. I don’t pretend to know why this happens, but I refuse to believe that this happens because of a lack of faith, or because they didn’t pray right, or because they didn’t have enough people praying for them. I refuse to even consider that there’s some kind of equation involved that you have to discover and stick with when it comes to God’s healing. I don’t think there is a magic combination of words you have to mutter in prayer in just that right order at just the right time with just the right amount of faith.

Let’s be real. I wouldn’t serve a God like that.

What I really want to address right now, however, is the middle ground. That place between God not healing, and God instantaneously healing. That part where you are sick long term (in my case pregnant and cancerous). And right now I'm staring  down the barrel of a long journey of potentially painful treatments that will poison my body in order to heal my body, endless doubts and fears, and the simple terrifying ordeal that we call the “unknown.”

Because in my case, in my personal journey so far with cancer, I believe 100% that I’m going to be healed. I’ve never doubted for even a second that God is going to bring me through this. There’s no way this is the end of the road for me. I just don't know exactly how that's going to happen.

I pray every day for healing, instantaneous if that’s what God wants to do, but I also pray for endurance if I have to “take the long way around.” This healing process isn’t about instant gratification. It’s about faith. Sure, I ask questions of God when I’m still cancerous at every appointment. Questioning everything is a side effect of cancer. I wonder sometimes why God’s taking me the long way. I think God is OK with those questions though. And even if I don’t receive an answer (or instant gratification), I still have faith that there is a reason for what I’m going through.

Instant healing is obviously a major faith booster for anyone who has ever experienced or witnessed it. But how much more faith does it take to have faith when you have to make the decision to believe for your healing every day when you wake up and are still ill? I have to make that decision every day, every time I have to take one of my dozens of pills, or injections, or have to take my blood sugar to monitor my brand new gestational diabetes diagnosis (thank you, steroids), or see the changes happening in my body due to the cancer or the treatments or the numerous side effects of anything and everything I just listed. I have to decide to have faith every time I hook myself up to the oxygen because my heart rate shoots through the roof and I get light headed without it.

I don’t pretend to understand why I’m going through this. I don’t pretend to know the theology behind suffering. I could write an entire blog about that alone and still not have any good answers for either me or anyone else out there suffering, or even those watching a loved one suffer.

What I do know that my past sufferings have always left me a better person on the other side, and I intend for this to be another part of that pattern.