Paralysis

Today I stumbled across the one word that describes where I have been for months: paralysis. I have been emotionally, mentally, spiritually paralyzed in the wearing away of many of my hopes and expectations.

I am aware that my situation is facilitating my journey to the Cross, and what I bear is, in fact, an invitation to suffer with Christ. But accepting that invitation requires more courage than I own or even aspire to own - I mean, who wants to die?

I had a conversation yesterday with a friend who encouraged me not to despise the death that is overtaking me. On the other side, she said, is Life. And peace. Oh, such peace.

Once upon a time I had an idea of God. "He's going to do this for me." "He'll give me my desire if I just pray in His will." "He'll reconcile this relationship because it must be His will." "After nine days in the hospital, I know there will be a diagnosis, a reconciliation, something!"

And He didn't do. And He didn't give. And He didn't reconcile. And my diagnosis was AWOL while He did something in the life of two doctors and a nurse.

And I was furious. And confused. Oh, so confused. God had done something for them, but not for me? He helped others but not me? But I had done, and prayed, and hoped, and loved, just like He told me! It wasn't fair! What reason did I have to follow Him now?

The heavens were silent except for His repeated reminders of His love.

A love I didn't want because I couldn't control it. A love I want so terribly I can't live without it.

My friend sent me a link to several chapters from a book by T. Austin-Sparks. The first chapter is entitled Paralysis: The Paralysis of Disappointed Expectations. Here are some quotes from the chapter:

"The facts are that there is often a larger service through a certain curtailment, a fuller life through a deeper death, a richer gain by a keener loss; and we have to look for the impact of the operation of God in us in a realm where the eye of man cannot trace."

"There is no doubt that most of those who have been called into some of the most vital expressions of 'the eternal purpose' have been trained in the school of apparent Divine contradiction, delay, withdrawal, and darkness. Paul wrote to the Thessalonian saints that 'no man should be moved by these afflictions for... we are appointed thereunto.'"

"If we have God's life in us we can survive anything. The Lord is not out to peevishly frustrate our hopes or disappoint our expectations, but to either change them for His own or fulfill them in a higher and larger realm."

"The greater the usefulness to God of any life, the deeper the loneliness in experience. He takes us often where no others can enter, interpret, understand, help. Rather, by their mental play upon our strange experience, and their interpretations given to it, they create even greater painfulness and distress for us. Sooner or later we are bound to be disappointed in man but this may lead to a rich and deep knowledge of God if we are not soured and paralysed by it."

(Read the entire chapter here.)

Once upon a time, God dreamed a dream of us knowing Him as He is.

He will not be disappointed.