So, what started, this round...this year...as apparent aggravation of a herniated cervical vertebra..to severe shoulder pain and numbness of both arms (especially hands)..
..then ebbing to rest, unto recuperation...gradual..
...then infection as both upper wisdom teeth became abscessed (they need to be removed, but until some means of doing so becomes apparent...prayer and clove oil will suffice)...
...which always ends up with sinus infection+both ears becoming infected...
...and then kidney infection / UTI...
...two weeks of rest took care of the cervical problem, allowing whatever inflammation had been at fault to clear up (apparently)...
...two days of cranberry juice took care of the lattermost (mercifully so)...
...and last night's treatments finally did in the abscesses...
...and this morning's treatments cleared up the ear infections...
...and the sinus infection seems, for once perhaps in a very long while...to be cleared up...
...so, today my lower back has gone out...
Better than accidentally poisoning myself with eugenol, as last year?
...which I still thank the Lord that I woke up, every time I stopped breathing (apparently, otherwise this wouldn't be in process of writing).
Funny feeling, that--to wake up with a sense of realization that oxygen has ceased. Same as if you've ever held your breath for an extended period, exhaling entirely from your lungs over the course...
...then, till that point where you must inhale...
...nothing having obstructed flow...
...but just the need for air, express.
Waking up into that.
Multiple times, through that night...which was also full of intermittent other pangs and toiling, physical...then to sleep, until waking up with a need for air...
...read Scripture, pray...
...toil, sleep, repeat.
So, now.
Sans that particular sort of unintended escapade...
...everything else has seemed to intend to shut down.
Even of the couple weeks of recuperation with the shoulder, full of prayer and study and rest...
...also full of all manner of weird heart palpitations, flutterings, stutterings, starts, and pangs...even unto lightheadedness.
Quietly, solemnly endured. Prayerfully, continually noting that it's only by the Lord's will that life remains intact, regardless.
So it is, for each of us, and yet to have these sorts of reminders?
Very humbling.
Last major experience with professional medical care wasn't well, though. And until or unless I'm in a position to need be taken in an ambulance, then I'd rather not go. There are all so many different ways of treating even pneumonia naturally. Diligently. Effective. Known.
I won't set major bones, though. Except for spinal readjustment, which is only a matter untaken and accomplished as given by grace, so to do. Even as not nearly as effective, perhaps, as someone who could just immediately undertake the thing.
I have to wait. Until the muscles relax enough so to do.
Even as...last year...last January...when my back went out as it did, incapacitating from even ability to walk, whatsoever...
...I don't recall ever having been able to realign whatever had slipped. Just awoke, the day after having realization that God is sufficient, and He is in control, and He will and would make a way when there was no way...able to walk, again. Usually takes time.
And it had never been that bad, before.
Unable to even sit up.
I'm in no position for surgery, though. I don't want surgery, moreover. Regardless how backward that might be. If it's God's will for their to be brain, neck, and back surgery at some point, then so be it, but I'm not lining up on my own will.
Thing is, I know there are a lot of folks who expect Him to just heal absolutely anything and everything. "If your faith is strong enough."
Hm. Yeah...no.
Doesn't work that way. Because that places the onus on a works-based sort of mentality, wherein the responsibility for process of the impossible lies with the created, rather than the Creator.
For those who say it's always His will to heal...
...then so also is it His will that none should perish.
And yet some will. Even as the healing reserved for some isn't manifested in the physical realm.
Same as Abraham's promised nation was seen evidenced in the giving of his son, Isaac, even as Abraham did not then see the multitude he would become.
Just as the Holy Spirit is given as a sort of guarantee of our inheritance in Christ. That which is not seen, yet experienced and which manifests regeneration and sanctification--a lifetime, thereafter unto eternity, in the Presence and peace of God.
There are those who sneer at the idea of trusting God, is all.
But as far as I'm concerned, my hands are tied.
What else is there?
Not trust Him, but trust myself and my care to the hands of others who don't know me nor have time to even begin to delve into potential complications at root?
He kept me from death, despite the fall from the balcony in 2006. He kept me from death, so many times else, too. When death did fall upon me--stopping my heart, stopping my breath.
I'm supposed to be blind, apparently. And maybe deaf and unable to speak, as well, given particular of the brain damage done in that same fall.
I'm not, though.
And it makes no sense, medically or scientifically.
So, it must be God. He, alone, would break the laws of nature which He set in place.
The fact that those laws are ever broken is evidence of His intervention.
(Michael Ramsden theology, yay!)
It's an individual thing, is all. And as much as, from the utmost objective and even lightly cynical perspective...it might superficially seem irresponsible, at first glance...
...realize this...
...the only reason I'm breathing, right now, is because He chose to spare me.
I have died, physically, so many times.
Not as many as some, but far more than most.
The first was before I was two years old.
Which...my mother was apparently unable to conceive for years, until they started praying...
...and I died before I was two...
...but was resuscitated.
And died again when I was four...
...and was resuscitated.
And overdosed when I was 15, but was made to walk the stairs all night by some entity whose identity I am not presently certain of, except to know the Lord had mercy--no one in the house knew.
And overdosed again about six months later.
And again, and again. Over and over.
And the balcony. And poisonings.
And all the things.
Constantly, it sometimes seems.
Thing is...I'm not my own. I'm His.
Same as we all are.
So it's not for me to even attempt any guesses at "why" these things have been and are as they are.
...why I'm seeking Him and require Jesus as my utmost of all, in all, now...
...why He's allowed me, in the past, to go to such depths of wretchedness...
...why I am who and how I am.
...why any of us endure or suffer or undertake or explore or endeavor..
I don't know why, but I do know Who.
And He is all-powerful, and good, and loving...and righteous...
...and His will is sovereign, supreme, and unbending.
Each of us are only who He would allow us to be, even as He designs.
And I don't have to understand that.
I just need to know Christ.
More of Him, is all.
Whatever comes.
Because these things are only momentary. And pain is what it is, and one day it won't be anymore.
But even that...is so meaningless, so trivial, so utterly...empty...
...taken alongside context of just absolutely requiring a deeper knowledge of Christ, no matter the cost.
...or even just taken alongside realization of any knowledge of Him.
He outshines pain. He eclipses suffering.
His love is that deep.
So, even in suffering and uncertainty, I can still proclaim my love to God, and my desire to know and to do His will--knowing full well my life is His. Not my own. He redeemed me.
I could never be worthy. And yet He is, and He clothes me in His righteousness and love and grace and mercies!
So, whatever, to the pain. It will pass.
He gives grace to treat these things.
And those which I'm unable, which He hasn't given grace so to do...even if of quiet recuperation?...He has made way for attending in other ways.
But no, it's not up to me.
I am His. I am nothing more than what and who He has made me to be.
Same as any.
Same as all.
My life, my all...is His. No longer with pretense of being other.
His love is all the dearer, all the more brightly sought and relished...in such moments as darkness would seek to eclipse. Darkness evaporates in light of His love.
But by His will.
And someday only a memory, sweetly reflected as such evidence of His grace. His faithfulness. His unwavering love. Even just as to know these things, in such a moment.
Pain is only all the more reason to cling to Him, unwaveringly flinging oneself with utter abandon upon His mercies, as knowing in any capacity...the truth of who Jesus really is.
He is alive.
He is with us.
Nearer than your next breath.
He Is.
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