Feeling Like Job?

I hear people say, “I am Job,” implying that life has become one difficulty or disaster after another. In the oldest of Biblical writings, God allows Job to be tried in severe ways that include loss of wealth, family, health, and status. The man, described as blameless and upright, one who feared God and shunned evil, is in undeserved misery. Yet he is remembered as the picture of patience (James 5:11). What kept him from sinking into anger, self-pity, victimhood, and rejection of God, instead declaring, “Though he slay me, yet I will hope in him.” (Job 13:15) JOB HAD HOPE.

On January 14, when I last posted, we were asking God for miracles. Some of you prayed along with us that the tumor in my spine would miraculously vanish, sparing me the need for an intricate back surgery. On January 28 I walked into the surgical center at Cleveland Clinic, climbed the stairway to the check-in desk, and underwent a six-hour operation, accepting that a slight possibility of major complication existed, hoping that all would go well.

As I came out of the anesthesia, I wiggled the toes on my right foot, but soon realized that I had little feeling or control of my left foot. The tumor, a benign growth, had surrounded nerves and become quite difficult to remove. While carefully monitoring function of my nerves, the surgical team did what I asked them to do, removing the mass, but leaving the nerves very agitated, in need of healing and regeneration. I was bedridden. One week later, instead of going home, I was loaded onto an ambulance to be transported to an acute care facility in our area to receive physical and occupational therapy. I’m writing from there now, anticipating my stay to be about three weeks.

Who would have imagined that Dave and I would face another difficult complication from a major surgery? Wasn’t what he went through seven years ago after his heart surgery at Cleveland Clinic enough? As I mentioned  in Miracles?, we asked then for God to heal his heart, but found our faith strengthened in the aftermath of surgery, not weakened.

We know God is good. We know he loves us. We know he heard every prayer. And yet, it seems I received the opposite of what was asked, a major recovery challenge instead of a miraculous healing.

I am Job. But not in the way you think. God put limits on Job’s suffering and in the end blessed him more than before. I’ve been counting the blessings in this circumstance, the limits that God has provided. I woke up from surgery with two strong arms and a strong leg. My left foot and leg do have strength and sensation, and I am regaining control day by day. These days I’m celebrating things like being able to urinate after having a catheter for two weeks, managing to get a shoe on the affected foot, and, miraculously, that I have very little pain in my back, making it possible for me to do the assigned exercises.

I’m thankful for the place I’m living in, for a private room and so many caring and skilled nurses and therapists, for the guys and gals who cook my food and clean my room, for the others who join me in group PT and OT sessions, so many people that I might never have met.

I am abundantly blessed by many friends and family members who continue to pray for me and to encourage me. I have hope and peace that come from believing God. To do that, I sometimes have to reject the lies that could send me spiraling downward. Ideas like, “You have every right to feel sorry for yourself,” “How could a loving God allow both you and your husband to experience complications like this?” “You were better off before surgery and don’t have much hope of a strong future.”

These lies come straight from Satan, the father of lies, who seeks to steal, kill and destroy. My HOPE is in Jesus who came that I (and you) may have life, abundant life.

I have a lot of work to do and adjustments to make as I heal, but I know that God is working all of this together for good. We are seeing it already. I am, in any moment, able to say, “I have what I need. God is here.”

And I believe, as Job did, “He knows the way that I take; when he has tested me, I will come forth as gold.” (Job 23:10)

I love this message from one of my greeting cards: When life gives you a hundred  reasons to cry, show life that you have a thousand reasons to smile.