when healing isn't your story

Christ Healing the Blind, El Greco. Source: The Met

A couple months ago, my dear friend called to tell us that she'd been approved for a life-changing medication for a health condition she's been struggling with for years. I cried. This was such an answer to prayer. 

Her teary, elated phone call that day got me thinking about healing and miracles and all the countless ways through which God draws near in suffering. Because, truly, I believe that this life-changing medication is a stroke of the divine in my friend's life, a reminder that miracles come in more forms than one. 

I grew up in a faith culture emphasizing healing. From a young age, I was taught that God desires and is capable of healing the ill, and that prayer should be our first response to sickness. In the small church I called home in my formative years, I witnessed many people anointed with oil, their recovery committed to prayer and intercession. To me, this is undoubtedly a beautiful inheritance of faith. 

But far be it from me to ignore some of the messy, tangled bits. 

I believe in miraculous healing, I do. I believe in inbreaks of God's Spirit that restore broken, suffering bodies. I've seen it happen! I have watched people healed of ailments and diseases upon prayer--sometimes immediately, sometimes over time. These instances are incredible and faith-building. They bring glory to an all-powerful God that hears and cares. 

But, over the years, I've grown increasingly weary of the way we conceptualize full healing--or, worst, instant healing alone--as the sole way through which God's power is made known in situations of sickness and suffering. 

So I ask: 

What if healing isn't your story? Can God's faithfulness and presence be manifested in the life of a person battling ongoing illness? 

I do not believe that God intends or delights in suffering. Far from it! Scripture indicates that maladies and affliction are a result of a broken world, shadowed by sin and death. In the new heaven and earth, our bodies will be entirely redeemed, free of the infirmities and diseases that riddle them today. This is good, good news! 

But on this earth, we are promised (yes, promised) suffering. In John 16:33, Christ Himself says: "In this world you will have trouble." (emphasis mine)

How, then, can our theology of suffering and healing properly account for the testimonies of countless saints who were familiar with suffering until their last breath? Do we frame them as mere flukes? Do we avoid the subject altogether, unable to reconcile God's nature with these experiences of long-lasting pain and suffering? 

I fear that dismissing these realities fuels a dangerous belief system. In this belief system, sufferers assume that having enough faith, praying more or working harder will ultimately heal them. This, to me, is a catastrophic slope toward a culture of shame and silencing in our churches. 

Yes, healing is a powerful testimony to a sick, dying world. But lest we forget that consistent faith in suffering is a powerful sermon to the world, too. 

My mom has been suffering with a terrible auto-immune disorder for now five years. Her pain has crippled her both physically and emotionally. This disease is an ever-present reality that affects her sleep, her movements, her energy. To be honest, I sometimes forget the healthier version of my mom, the one bursting with vigor and life, that I knew for most of my life. She isn't who she was, and there is no promise that her pain will ever become past-tense. This is a heartbreaking reality to contend with. 

I don't hesitate to say this illness is far from pleasing to God, and grieves Him deeply. Nor do I hesitate to pray for her healing every day! But I am also keenly aware of God's presence in her life since the advent of her symptoms, years ago. 

God did not abandon my mom. He did not "forget" to heal her. Rather, He stands in solidarity with her, drawing near to her in her excruciating pain. 

Hers is not a story of miraculous healing. At least, not for now. But as she sets her gaze upon God day after day--year after year--she bears testimony to the grace of God empowering her as her hardship lingers. 

Since her diagnosis, she has spoken of tender moments with her pierced, suffering Savior. In the dim light of early mornings, you can find her in the corner of her living room daily, her tattered Bible open and hands extended in prayer. She comes to her God for strength, and as He consistently sustains her in her suffering, others are pointed to His goodness and faithfulness.

How could I say this is not a testimony of God's power, and that only her full healing is? 

My mom's story of sickness tells the world of the greater story in which she belongs: one in which her injured body will be made new at Christ's return, and she will one day dance upon the broken shackles of her suffering in His presence. 

And this I do believe: Jesus is being made beautiful through my mom as she suffers with faith and hope. 

As time goes on, I am increasingly cognizant of pained bodies in my entourage. I witness the growing discomforts of my own body in a fallen world. As this happens, I realize that a prime component of the Christian faith I cherish is this: our God knows suffering, too. He is far from removed from it. Isaiah 53:3 describes the Messiah as follows: "He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain."

When I take communion every week at church, I am reminded that the Son of God's body was broken. Tore. Brutally tortured onto a painful death. 

What great comfort this brings to believers whose own bodies are left broken, unhealed.  

Don't be mistaken: I will continue to pray for healing for those in my life who suffer. Because the miraculous is in our midst! Perhaps, one day, I will witness my mom be healed fully in a single instant, by a miraculous touch of heaven. Or perhaps I will receive a phone call from her, as I did my friend not long ago, sharing of a medication or treatment that has changed everything for her. This, too, would be a miracle. 

But I pray I never limit God's power to these outcomes, lest I miss His presence in her very real pain and illness. He's here now, in her constant suffering. I have seen firsthand that His grace and His strength are found in the tragic loss she has faced in the past five years. 

May we behold these stories of suffering as poignant testimonies of a God at work. They're signposts of a God who mourns with His children, Who inches closer and closer, extending miraculous comfort and lavish grace in the midst of the harsh realities they face. 

Healing might not be your story. Suffering may not be conquered in this life, but friend--it will. Because we're part of a bigger story. One in which all things, including you and me, will resurrect and be made new. 

My beautiful mama and me, on my wedding day.

Important note: Many of the thoughts articulated in this blogpost were inspired and fed through my reading of the book This Too Shall Last, by K.J. Ramsey earlier this year. Ramsey suffers of the same auto-immune disorder as my mom. Her book is a powerful, robust reflection on her own experience of pain, contextualized within her theology of suffering. I highly recommend it.