Originally written: October 16, 2015
People ask me all the time how I am. Just the other day one of my players asked how it was going. I told her everything was good and then changed the subject. That’s what I do every time. She was so honest: “Coach, you’re so confident in everything you talk about, except this.”
And it struck me that what she meant was, “I know you’re lying.” And I was.
This has been the hardest two weeks outside of the immediate diagnosis. I am often afraid. My hands are back in full swing. We went to a new doctor—local, but more specialized. I was so excited for the appointment—had been praying about it for months.
I don’t know what I was expecting, but I left with a heavy heart. I liked him. A lot. I will switch, and I know the Lord is in this transition. But if I am going to be honest, I think I wanted to go in and hear they can fix me. Instead, I had to stare at the MRIs of my brain and spine again, be faced with the undeniable reality that those pictures reveal. The white spots, the finger-like lines that make my case “a no-brainer”—no pun intended. I have MS. Deal with it.
I’m trying.
The hands are as bad as they have been in months (which is not to say they are bad, just noticeable). And I am so tired it’s getting in the way. I’m stressing about stressing, recognizing that as one of the greatest triggers for another attack.
As the fall comes to a quick beginning and, as always, a quick close, I wonder what this winter will hold for me. I want to know what happens next.
I was convicted about this the other day while I was getting ready in the morning and my three children sat on the bed watching an episode of Sofia the First. I found myself asking my four year old what happens next (because surely he’s already seen this one before). And I thought to myself how absolutely ridiculous it was that I needed to know exactly what was going to happen in a most predictable and trivial cartoon. But that’s how I am in life, too. I want to know what’s going to happen next.
Then someone sent me this quote from Francis Chan:
"But God doesn’t call us to be comfortable. He calls us to trust him so completely that we are unafraid to put ourselves in situations where we will be in trouble if he doesn’t come through.”
And isn’t that so where the Lord has me? I am weak. And I hate it. Yet the very weakness I hate, brings me closer to Him, forces me to place all of my trust in Him.
TRUST. I know the Lord is checking in. Are you trusting me? He keeps asking.
So I pray, and I kick and I scream on the inside as He teaches me to seek Him, to trust Him, to abide in Him... with all my heart.