Illness...

Illness...that's a loaded word. It comes with all kinds of perceptions and personal experiences, fears and anxieties. So what has God taught me through illness? I have been fortunate to be pretty healthy my whole life. I will never forget taking Ariana to the hospital when she was 10 weeks old. She had a high fever that wouldn't come down. Leaving the room on the doctor's request so that she could have a spinal tap was probably one of the hardest things I have had to do. Watching my grandmother waste away with cancer is a memory I would like to erase. Standing in the doctor's office with Marten in excrutiating pain, being told he was very sick and needed to be in the hospital is another one that I'd like to forget. Months later standing in his hospital room waiting and praying for him to get better and come home was hard too.
We are sooo fragile. We take our wonderfully made bodies so for granted. We take it for granted that they will be healthy. We take it for granted that our friends and loved ones will always be around, strong and present.
God has taught me through illness how better to relish each day that my eyes open, I draw breath, and my feet hit the floor. I have learned that health is not a given but a gift to be treasured. I have also learned that in those times when we do experience illness, our own, or another's God is near. He is near in the people who draw near, in those who pray, in the doctor's and the nurses, and in the quiet stillness. He is near when it seems no one else is.
God is the great healer. He heals in ways sometimes that we cannot comprehend or anticipate.
Sometimes a long fight, pain, waiting, hoping, praying culminates in death. For those of us who believe, this is the ultimate form of healing, when we get our resurrection bodies.

3 John 1
2Dear friend, I pray that you may enjoy good health and that all may go well with you, even as your soul is getting along well.