It made me think of the last Women's Encounter. Having been to an encounter before, I knew the hot-seat session was coming. My problem was I had pretty much dealt with everything at the previous encounter - all the fears, childhood issues, self-confidence problems, "Yahweh's child," and so what did I have left? Two cool things happened as I pondered this at the Encounter. One, God spoke to me - words so comforting I broke into tears: "Rejoice in your wholeness, child." Of course. God had healed so many aspects of my life - it was time to rejoice in finally being full and whole and finding value in being a child of God. And two, as I searched, I realized that what I still faced was the physical healing issue. Don't know if I have mentioned it, but I am in a wheelchair. I was in a car accident as a child and have been in a wheelchair ever since.
Have been a Christian pretty much my whole life but it was not until I encountered philosophies that embrace spiritual gifts that I began to understand God's power to heal. Of course, Jesus and God healed all the time in the Bible, but what did that have to do with me? Slowly, I began piecing together my view on physical healing. It is harder than you might believe - to reconcile your faith in God's power to heal and the recognition that it may not be in His will. I am an adaptive person, perhaps by nature, or perhaps as a result of my "condition" but I am, nonetheless, the type to accept things as they are and move on. To this end, I have never really developed a sense of pity, nor one of pride, toward my disability. It just is what it is and I move on. However, the revelation that broke me at the Encounter was: I WANT TO RUN AND DANCE FOR GOD - and my body just won't cooperate!!
At any rate, this is what I shared in the hot-seat session and this is what my great spiritual adviser said: "You like to rationalize, don't you? I feel God saying the word, 'separate.' Work out your salvation and purpose SEPARATE from the chair and the disability. Separate.'
Yeah, okay. Easy for walkie to say, but my struggle since has been to understand what it means to be separate from what I have seen for so long making me who I am. The disability has never defined me, or at least I have gone to lengths to ensure it hasn't, but of course it is part of me and who I am. It has taught me so many things and I am a better person for having had the experience. Suddenly, I am forced to reconcile a whole new concept: who I am is SEPARATE from this chair! What?!
To sum up what I am struggling with, here is a poem I wrote some time ago about the conflict between embracing God's will and fully trusting it:
I want to lay it down at your feet
But I can’t let it there when I leave
Can’t means something to me
And I can’t leave this at your feet
So if I bring this to you now
I have to stay until you heal
The pain you found inside me
If I leave it with you
I can’t go anywhere
And if I want to leave
I can’t give it to you
This thing is attached to me
And I need you to set me free
And here are the words that can best explain where I am with this now:
"I'll be running the race even while I wait/I will worship while I'm waiting."
See, because Christians are MEANT to be SEPARATE! We are not better than everyone else, we are not holier or above the things of this world - we are separate from them (which by the way is actually what "holy" means, so maybe we are that). We are not from this world. We are separate. We can be here and learn the lingo and fit in and get jobs and so on, but our purpose and calling and our home and hearts reside in HEAVEN! I can find my purpose in God's plan separate from my chair, because I am not in a chair - I am separate - I am running and dancing for God: running the race, worshipping, and waiting...to go home. And when I get there, that chair will have never mattered a bit.
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