Frailty

31 Days Walking Through Chronic Illness

day twenty~two

“We want suffering to be like pregnancy~we have a season, and it’s over, and there is a tidy moral to the story”

Quote from Jason Tippetts from The Hardest Peace by Kara Tippetts

This cooler autumn day finds me layered up with fuzzy socks and the orange bathrobe. Again.

Longing for warmth as the sun slashes across the floor. I stand in the warm spot, bringing feeling back into my toes. Scoot Lola, my furry friend over a bit, to share the spot with me.

The frailties of my human flesh curl up next to me. Close. Humility comes in the aching bones and shuffling feet.

Weakness, where muscles were once strong and lean. The zippy pace I once moved with, evaporated. Faded into my old life. Buried in the past.

“I’ve come to sense that isn’t what faith is at all. What if there is never an end? What if the story never improves and the tests continue to break our hearts? Is God still good?” Kara Tippets~The Hardest Peace

Is God still good? In this frailer way of life?

Oh yes, you shaped me first inside, then out; you formed me in my mother’s womb.

I thank you, High God~you’re breathtaking!

Body and soul, I am marvelously made! I worship in adoration~what a creation!

You know me inside and out, you know every bone in my body;

You know exactly how I was made, bit by bit, How I was sculpted from nothing into something.

Like an open Book you watched me grow from conception to birth; all the stages of my life were spread out before you, 

The days of my life all prepared before I’d even lived one day.

Psalm 139:13~16 The Message

Yes. Yes, I believe he is still good. I was formed by his hands, molded and sculpted. Marvelously made, P.O.T.S. and all. My life planned out before me.

It brings me to my knees when I ponder this, in the frailty of my life as it is.

He knew this day, this season would come. Knew it would bring the humbling, the surrendering of all that I am.

Knew that I would slowly come ’round to the yielding. The end of myself.

Frailty does that to a soul. Brings you into a place of complete dependence.

I can look at this as a curse, or I can choose to see it as his marvelous work.

I choose to be his marvelous work. Made bit by bit.

Marvelous: breathtaking, extraordinary beauty. Words that makes me feel special. Cherished. Chosen especially for this.

Choosing to worship in it.

The other option. To give up and give in. I don’t like the ring it has. The darkness, the finality of it all.

“Each day we were given we had the privilege to fight to be faithful in it. We simply didn’t know what that faithfulness would look like, but we trusted Jesus to be gentle in teaching us the footing.” Kara Tippets~The Hardest Peace

Times my footing is shaky in my faith. When all the intentionality in choosing worship over whining and cursing, nowhere to be found.

I have to go back to that marvelous work he tells me I am. Open His book, run my finger across his words.

It could be a harder story, as I look around and see there are those walking a stonier path.

“Time is a relentless river. It rages on, a respecter of no one. And this, this is the only way to slow time: When I fully enter time’s swift current, enter into the current moment with the weight of all my attention, I slow the torrent with the weight of me all here.”

Ann Voskamp~One Thousand Gifts

I slow the time when I take his face in my hands, breathe him in. Worship.

It is the only way to not get caught up in the current of my disease. Not to let it wash me away.

To have hope in what seems hopeless and never ending.

The daily~ness of living in my frailty.

Yes, He is good, and though it is hard, it is a thing of beauty to be in this place of total dependence.

Gifts of Grace

Tammy Mashburn

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