Originally written: October 2, 2015
I forgot tonight for awhile that I have MS. No one asked about it at the fundraiser we attended, and I didn’t think about it. I’d already decided I was going to eat what I wanted, and it couldn’t have worked out any better that they had PEACE, LOVE & LITTLE DONUTS.
I had two.
But then a beautiful young mother said she was expecting, and I groaned on the inside—just a pang of longing for that feeling again. We put Charlotte’s high chair downstairs today. Even as I type this, I contemplate going down to retrieve it. It’s like looking through an old year book—as if the picture (or the high chair) will keep me (or her) in that stage forever.
It’s not that you can’t ever have kids again, the doctor in Cleveland told us. Just not right now. You need to get this under control first.
And I know it’s so selfish—I have three beautiful children. There are so many wonderful women who would die just to have one. But we are selfish beings, and I can’t help it. I want more. But it’s hard to imagine going off the medicine. I’m so afraid of another attack, what the next one might leave as a permanent reminder of this disease.
Eating all that food didn’t help anything, either. It took me til the morning to realize why I was up at 3:30am, unable to get a wink of more sleep. It’s great eating healthy, until you eat unhealthy and it throws your whole system out of whack!
So I came downstairs to read a little of Elizabeth Eliot, and I felt a strong necessity, a stirring inside of me to surrender again. Like in Hocking Hills. Like the scary, am I really doing this, kind of surrender.
Don’t you remember what happened last time? Surrender on Monday—MS on Friday… .
I was sort of in a delirious, super tired kind of state at this point, so I’m not exactly sure how it went, but I do know I turned over and talked to the Lord about it. Inside my heart. And I know that He may call me deeper still. And I asked to be okay with that.
It happened in church again today, and even as I write to you I look outside at the quiet creation and know He is calling me deeper still. And I can tell you I’m desperately afraid—I can sense it back there behind the shield, lingering, because He’s allowing it to—because that’s part of having faith: knowing that it’s scary and still believing.
And I pray: I surrender again and again and again. Sift me, Lord if you must. Help me to TRUST in your promises. If there is any other way… your will and not my own.
“I can do everything through Him who gives me strength.”
Amen.