I know what it's like to not want to live. I have told my sweet hubby that I feel like I have no purpose anymore and that I didn't want to continue living like this. I get tired of all the doctor and hospital visits. All I want to do is sleep until I am well or in Heaven, whichever comes first.

In spite of my feelings, I know God has a plan for my life and that He will either heal me or give me His grace to make it through this. Remember Paul's plea to God to remove his thorn in 2 Corinthians 12:8-10?

"⁸Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. ⁹But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. ¹⁰That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong."

Let your Father be your strength. Pray to Him. Meditate on His love. No matter what we suffer, we can know that He suffered even more. Think about how he suffered. It was not just the physical horror of death on the cross. Jesus, who had never experienced spiritual separation from His Father, was to experience it when God had to turn away from Him because He bore our sins. Romans 6:23 "For the wages of sin is death." This death is not just physical death, but spiritual death...a far more painful death.

Do not despair. Reach out to God and to fellow Christians. It is okay to let other Christians know that you have troubles. Just be sure to choose a mature Christian with whom to share, such as your priest or pastor. Allow God to feed your spirit. Get alone and read your Bible and meditate on His love. Ask Him for healing. After all, He is the Great Physician. He will heal us, either here or in Heaven. If God's plan for us is to bear this cross until our physical death, then let's pick it up and carry it...we will not bear it alone. Jesus is with us, holding it up for us, carrying it AND us when we cannot go another step. We can join our suffering to His.

Rest in Him.

This is what I feel led to do in this website:  Exhort each other with God's Word, God's promises, God's love. Even if it is only one other person that is uplifted, it is worth the effort. I pray that God will use me. It is not the way I envisioned service to Him, but it is His current plan for my life. In the past, I taught Bible studies. The thought that I cannot do that during this illness due to the unpredictability of flare ups, really saddened me. However, I can see that He can still use me to teach, exhort, uplift and love. This will be my ministry as long as God leads.

Again, rest in Him. Tell Him how you feel. He will understand and He will lift you up.

 

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