TWENTY YEARS OF PAIN . . . AND THANKFULNESS
I am looking back over more than twenty years of illness and thanking God for them. Does that sound strange? Ah, but they have brought me gifts, those weary years. I do not enjoy sickness nor suffering, nor the nervous agony and exhaustion that are harder to bear than physical pain. And an invalid must bury so many dear dreams which have death struggles and refuse to die decently and quietly. But God has a way of taking away our toys, and after we have cried for awhile like disappointed children, He fills our hands with jewels which “
cannot be valued with the gold of Ophir, with the precious onyx, or the sapphire.”
And what friends He has given me! Are there more loyal friends than those who stand by the sick through the years? My family and friends have prayed for me, encouraged me, quietly sacrificed for me, washed my dishes, rubbed my aching head, offered me everything from new books to their very life-blood for blood transfusions. I should like to speak of a very devoted and tender husband, but that is a matter too personal.
The Gifts of Laughter and VisionI know that laughter is not listed as one of the gifts of the Spirit, but I do thank God for it. He has undoubtedly given it to man, and personally, I fail to see how an invalid could bear life without it, or how our families could endure us unless we had some sense of humor.
I have thanked God many times for a love of beauty. How He must love beauty, since He took pains to make so much of it! I often think how much pleasure He must derive from all that He has created. Surely He wants us to appreciate it, not to go about with blind eyes, oblivious to so lovely a gift. I am reminded of the verse in Kings, “
And the Lord opened the eyes of the young man; and he saw.” There is so much that we could see in the physical as well as in the spiritual world if we would let God touch our eyes. Perhaps He has given to sick people, as a compensation, a freshness of impression, a heightened appreciation of the things which are commonly taken for granted because we are accustomed to them—the marvelous tracery on the wings of a butterfly, the intricacy of a spider's web, a child's laughter, and the morning star alone in the sky.
I shall never forget one evening years ago. I had been in bed most of the time for five years, and that particular summer, I had not been out at all. My eyes as well as my soul needed far horizons to keep from growing nearsighted. So that evening I managed to get to the hammock on the front porch. The stars were bright above me, depth beyond depth of velvet space. The branches of an old elm tree were black against the sky, and the shadows of leaves in the moonlight fell over me.
The shadow of a leaf is a marvelous thing, with all that it implies of stationary laws, of creation, of growth, of God. I looked at them as though I had never seen them before. I saw so many wonders that night, wonders that God had made, of earth and sky and winds and trees. And always people passing, footsteps approaching and dying away, never realizing (how could they?) how wonderful were freedom and strength. How my heart went out to these passers-by, each one more precious to God than all the wonders of the night sky. And how surprised they would have been to know that someone, back in the shadows of the porch, had prayed for them! Machine loads of gaily laughing young people, small boys breathless from an evening game of tag, bits of conversation. A child begging, “Daddy, carry me,” and a voice saying tenderly, “Lovey, do the new shoes hurt your feet?” It made me think of a tender Shepherd carrying the lambs of His flock. The memory of my magic night has never left me, and often when things grow flat and stale, I go back to the time when, for a little space, I really saw, when all of earth and all of heaven, all the things terrestrial and the things celestial, were in the living air about me.
The Lessons That the Sleepless LearnIt seems odd that I can thank Him for sleeplessness. I have suffered so from it, and yet, looking back, I can see that some of the greatest blessings have come during the long nights. At about two in the morning, when all the world is quiet, God comes very close- Sometimes when I have been wakeful for hours with fever or pain, or have tossed about, restlessly trying to solve the problems, financial and domestic, that come when someone in the home is ill, at last the thought has come, “How foolish of me! I don't have to attend to this. He will do it for me.” And I have whispered over and over to myself some of His precious promises, and they were indeed a lamp unto my feet in the night.
Often I would go out to sit in our back yard. It has a tiny lawn, green hedges, two trees, and oh, such a deep sky overhead! What a host of stars, so calm, so serene, so steadfast! I would sit quietly for a long time, and after a while, the peace of God would sink into my soul, and I would see that after all it mattered little that my broken body suffered, since the body's loss may be the spirit's gain. Nothing that happens to us is important except in so far as it affects our spiritual development, our knowledge of God, and the growth of our faith.
The Challenge of Leisure HoursWe sick people have so much leisure, unwelcome sometimes, but blessed beyond measure when rightly used. I often wonder whether you dear ones who are so active in His service are not sometimes too busy with doing. God's voice is a still small voice, and we must listen in order to hear it. Or at times we only feel Him, resting quietly beneath His hand.
Of course, one of the hardest things about being sick is a feeling of uselessness. We want to work for God. Can it be that we have an idea that God is needy, that our services are necessary to Him? Oh, it is indeed good to work for God, but it is better just to do His will, and it may be that it is not His will that all should work. Some day He will tell us about that.
But there is one great ministry in which even we sick ones may share and I thank God for that — the ministry of prayer. It is a marvelous, a breath-taking thought, that I lying here on my bed in my small room, may help set in operation the vast machinery of God, may change the destiny of a life, a world, may even hasten the day of His appearing! Why don't we pray more? Do you remember the old fairy stories about the magic carpet which would whisk one away to the edge of the world, or about the wishing ring, which one had only to turn three times and a wish would come true? How we used to long for them, and how very sure we were that if we had them we would use them! And yet we Christians have something that far transcends, in wonder and power, any of these things, and how often we fail to use it! Can it be that in our heart of hearts we doubt its efficacy? What other explanation can there be? Oh, when we get to heaven and learn what we might have accomplished with prayer!
Rest in the Will of GodI recall that after I had been sick for several years, I thought, in my foolishness, that I had learned the lessons which God wanted to teach me, and that He would let me go out into the world and work for Him. As though one could ever learn all that God has to teach! No, I am still sick, though not bedfast. I do not understand why I must still be an invalid. I no longer expect to understand. If I did, there would be no need of faith. Enough that He knows why, and some day He will tell me all about it—why it was best for me and best for His cause.
And meanwhile His strength is made perfect in my weakness, and He can supply all my needs “
according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus.” It is one thing to think so—it is another thing to have found out by actual experience that it is so, to know beyond a shadow of doubt that when you go down into the valley, you can clasp His hand—that you never need to be alone nor afraid, for He will go with you on all your paths — and that His arm is strong enough to carry you. It is blessed beyond words to know these things.
The Hope of TomorrowBut the best part of all is the blessed hope of His soon coming. How I ever lived before I grasped that wonderful truth, I do not know. How anyone lives without it these trying days I cannot imagine. Each morning I think, with a leap of the heart, “He may come today!” and each evening, “When I awake I may be in glory!”
Each day must be lived as though it were to be my last, and there is so much to be done, to purify myself, and to set my house in order. I am on tiptoe with expectancy. There are no more gray days, for they are all touched with color; no more dark days, for the radiance of His coming is on the horizon; no more dull days, with glory just around the corner; and no more lonely days, with His footsteps coming ever nearer, and the thought that soon, soon, I shall see His blessed face, and be forever through with pain and tears!