How many of us speak those words when praying our Lord's prayer, without really being willing for His will to be done in all areas of our lives, for us to submit in whatever way He wishes and just rest in knowing it is His divine will, and He knows what's better for us than we do?
Submission: That was the hardest word to get my head around in a divine sense. Submission has defeatist connotations, and giving up and giving in, which to me is something that most of my life would have led to death.
We're all happy when we feel God's favour, God's blessings, we feel loved. But what about when the rubber hits the road and things just can't get any worse from our perspective? I've heard folks say, that being strapped to a sick bed, without hope of relief, is the time when we know how far we trust God.
I love dogs. And pets are completely within our control of what we choose to do with them. They depend on us to eat, for shelter, for love and all the things that dogs like about life. If one has a dog, or a puppy, cos you want to care and love it, and it be a friend, do we deprive of it everything it will enjoy, to make its life as miserable as one possibly can, or do you give it a home and an environment in which it will thrive and grow, and trust you more than anyone or anything in the world, and would be prepared to die for you if it had to? but at the same time, if the dog is ill, you will not give it things one would normally, knowing to do so, would make it sicker. A dog that is throwing up continually, you don't give it scooby snacks, tho from my experience with dogs, there's many a pooch during a bout of such sickness would take them and gobble them down if you offered them. But the dog will likely be quite miserable and somewhat hard to live with, as it starts to get well, and yet still can't eat, and starts to become hungry. It will cry and groan and do all the equivalent to try and make its owner give in and give it what it desires. But, if you love the dog, in the proper way, you will withold what it wants, not wanting it to be ill again by not doing so, and the dog will likely do your head in, whining and crying and just generally being unhappy. But you know in witholding what it desires, you are doing what it needs, to be well. And I'm not comparing us with dogs, yet isn't that exactly the same scenario when a whole lot of unexpected trouble or affliction comes into our lives? And isn't our reaction often the equivalent of what the dog does, cos it wants food?
I think submission is hard, to anothers will even God. Yet each time we say those words of the Lord's Prayer, its part of our covenant with God.
I didn't want to be sick, I hated it. And still do in many ways. No one ever gets used to living with this level of pain. I didn't want to spend the rest of my days in this wheelchair. I didn't want to be limited in any way,shape or form. The fact that it almost happened simulataneously at conversion seemed another part of the cross. As this seemed like it could never be borne out of love. And I wasn't happy unless A) God made it clear to me why. B) God fixed it. It felt like being in the middle of a nitemare one could never wake up from, and always with the sense of confusion that often accompany nightmares. And still I prayed, "Thy will be done" like a right royal hypocrite.
Lifes hard. Harder than I ever remember it before, and I never remember a real time of ease or comfort. And I still hate the illness in the sense of dealing with it, coping with it, living with it, for the most part on a human scale, completely alone. When you've not got the strength to feed oneself, or even get into bed from ones wheelchair, the whole scenario becomes something, that its easy to become grieved about. I hate the way the doctors sit around scratching their heads, and one feels if you popped your cloggs and died tonite, they'd say "Oops" cos of how they haven't done very much at all. And sometimes I hate the sense of loss, and how the world seems to go on all around you, while in almost completely in one room, you life and what feels like death is taking place, tho it could be over many years. Everything once valued has gone. Not a solitary thing left. And sometimes that spacious place, is all I long for.
So, yes I hate it, I long for relief and help, and often just someone to be around when things get scary. Yet I also know in all these things I hate so much, that God's will is being done. And looking back all that's been lost, grief can threaten to over-whelm. Yet I guess the bottom line is, my conversion and illnes both came around the same time. I long for the help and to find relief from the unrelenting symptoms, yet I also know how quickly we forget even the hardest lessons in life. How when the going is smooth we lay down what is important to us, to when we are confined in a way that makes them ultra important. So, I don't neccessarily desire release from this any more, tho I long for relief, as somehow it seems like if release came, and was total, the chains of this illness would fall away yes, but the chains of the world would be there to drag me back, in a way it can't now, and know there's a far higher temptation, that by being able to be walking around in freedom, and health, and a completely functional brain, would have me well, but also on the road to hell. As I think we're all hedonists at heart. And I think in that situation now, I would want to make up for the last three years, and drink deeply and so, these chains that my body makes for me, in one sense does seem like the end of the world, and yet, its given me no end to my world, but one ahead of life and hope and joy and happiness that has always seemed out of grasp here. My freedom in this world, comes from looking ahead, this is my home for now, in this prison my body makes, yet the freedom and joy ahead not despite of but because of this prison, sometimes this seems almost a small thing, and a cross neccessary to bear, to reach the real point of freedom and happiness. Being deprived of my health in every significant way, seemed to be bound up in happiness and lackof, yet my happiness is bound up in my hope, when Jesus will wipe away every tear.
