Hello. My name is Johanna, and I'm a hypochondriac. Super. Now that I've gotten that off my chest, we can move on to bigger and better things...
But for real. Let me explain something to you. I am a legitimate hypochondriac. Like completely and utterly paranoid, every ache and pain is a prelude to cancer--which I probably already have anyway--kind of hypochondriac. And I'm not making light of this. I have a real problem. It doesn't help that my father died of cancer at the ripe, old age of 41 when I was only 14 and that my mother is a nurse and that I majored in self-diagnosis courtesy of the Internet and my own vast medical knowledge. It also doesn't help that I've had some small but disconcerting health concerns, including thyroid disease, ovarian cysts, and lumps in the back of my mouth that turned out to be nothing more than rotting food that was catching in some scar tissue caused by my semi-annual cases of strep throat. (That was an over-share, wasn't it?) Hardly debilitating by any stretch, but for someone who can convince herself that those white spots in her throat are actually tumors and that the uterine pain is actually ovarian cancer, any foreign pain can be cause for absolute, life-altering panic.
It's an unpleasant way to live life, particularly for someone still under the age of 30. I often feel like I have no control over the thought processes that lead me from neck and back pain to tumors on my spine. It's utterly terrifying.
And yet, the strangest thing happened this morning as I was driving to work. My prayer recently has been for the Lord to make me desperate, because if I'm honest with myself, I'm not.
Wait. I take that back.
I'm desperate for many things: health, money, stability, joy, patience, health. I could go on all day. But I'm not truly desperate for the One who is truly desperate for me. I was in the car in tears this morning trying to pray away my latest health concerns, which include random nerve and muscle pain in my back and neck and headaches, so cancer naturally. It's pain I can't explain, and that scares me in a way that it shouldn't but does and leads me into a place of despair in which I don't want to dwell. (Stay with me. I'm making a point here. I promise.)
But sitting there in my car and singing through the tears, I realized that I was desperate and legitimately unhealthy, not physically but in spirit. In that moment, when I was as scared of something so improbable that it's actually absurd, I was brought to a point of desperation. I got that for which I had been praying. Crazy, right? I'm so preoccupied with being sick with worry (no pun intended), that I don't see how horribly faithless I've become. I feel like so often I don't pray for the things I absolutely need because if I'm really honest, I don't want what God is going to give me. I don't pray for patience, because that is inevitably the time that my children start to act like maniacs on the loose from the institution, thereby giving me a cringe-inducing need to actually exercise patience. I don't pray for humility, because that's obviously the time that I will walk face-first into the all-glass door of an upscale Indonesian chocolate boutique. I don't pray for pain for obvious reasons; I simply lack the courage.
I. Pray. Safe.
Instead I pray for health and grace and joy and an over-abundance of love, the happy virtues that make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. I pray for the pain to go away and the suffering to end. But in that, I miss the point. I miss the point that there can be so much beauty and growth in the suffering, and I'm just praying it all away. I miss the point that it is in that suffering that the power and strength and love of the Father is perfectly manifested. I miss the point that if I continually pray away the hardships, I forsake the opportunity to enable Him to manifest that strength and power through me.
So there it is. I don't know what it all means yet; I'm still working through it. Am I sitting here tonight praying for pain? No, but I'm praying for weakness, whatever that means. And I'm praying for faith. And if it takes pain and absolute desperation to get me to that point, then so be it.
- J.
Johanna, your words were so beautiful and your honesty refreshing. I have found that the times that I feel our Lord the most, are the times when I am at my worst. When we are empty and in pain, God is the only One that can fill the hole inside of us. You are not the only one in this world that prays "safe." We all do it. Thank you for your courage to step out in faith. Now you need to expect, with joyful anticipation, that God is going to catch you. I will pray for you. Pax et Bonum!
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