Writing is hard for me. I am tempted to write and erase every other line, but I know that I can’t enjoy writing when I am trying to be perfect. My writing will never be above reproach, and that is okay. At least, that is what I am trying to convince myself of at the moment.

All the little imperfections of life bother me everyday. It makes it hard for me to cope with the brokenness and suffering that I experience.

I have been seeing more clearly that not only does everyone suffer with different things, but that everyone responds to suffering differently. There are people that will commit all of their energy into denying and avoiding suffering and negative feelings, while others want to immediately address and confront the problem in front of them. Some people tend to isolate themselves when suffering and others post all of their issues on Facebook.

I have the tendency to get frustrated with sufferings because they feel like imperfection to me. This past Friday was a long hard day, and I felt like I had nothing left to give by the time the day reached the evening. Instead of accepting my weakness and my exhausted state, I became angry because I wanted to be stronger and better than I felt in that moment.

Broken and bad

Daytime sleep attacks, jaw pain, cataplexy, dehydration from my medicine, hallucinatory dreams, and being dependent on a drug to sleep at night can drive me crazy at times. It is easy for me to think that responding in anger is simply a natural response to the suffering that I face, but it’s not nearly as simple as that.

This past Friday, I was angry because I felt broken and bad. All day, I tried my best to be full and good, but my energy reserve was spent, and I no longer felt capable of being anything besides dependent and tired. I wanted to give my husband more than that when he came home from work. I felt embarrassed at my own shortcomings and frustrated with my limitations.

I have been trying to be honest with God about these things. Sometimes it is easier for me to go through the motions of Christian spirituality than to really sit down and be honest with God. I am fairly good at following the agenda and doing what I am supposed to do. I can self-discipline and confess my sin every morning and praise God, but it can end up being more of a duty to check off my list if I am not careful.

I was honest with God the morning after my day of feeling broken and bad. I didn’t try to have the answers or say the right things. I came needy and broken. I came suffering, confused, and doubtful. I came as a child that desperately wanted to know the love and wisdom of her father. It wasn’t easy to be there with God, but it was so good.

Word made alive

One of the things that I have deeply struggled with is understanding the suffering that I have experienced. On that morning, I confessed my confusion and asked for wisdom to understand before I dived into the scriptures. The Holy Spirit drew me to the passage about Jesus healing a man born blind in John 9.

In the story, Jesus’s disciples are trying to make sense of the suffering of the man born blind and ask Jesus if the suffering is a result of his or his parents’ sin. Jesus surprises them and says, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him.”

I felt like Jesus was speaking directly to me as I read those words, and I felt honored. I felt honored to be someone that the works of God are displayed through. It comforted me to think that narcolepsy and jaw pain could help me better display God’s goodness and glory. The passage also reminded me that there is always hope in Christ.

The man who was healed was blind since birth. He suffered for a long time before Jesus healed him. When we are suffering, we want God to fix it fast, but God generally works slower than we would like him to. My physical symptoms test my patience everyday and sometimes all I can do is cry out for the Lord to heal me.

But even when it feels like I am never going to be free from my sufferings, I have hope in a God that heals in his own perfect timing. Although I don’t know what lies ahead of me in this life, I know that one day, I will experience healing beyond anything that I can imagine.