This post has taken a while to write. I had the main text written weeks ago but just before posting it, the title I’d chosen became my challenge in my own circumstances.
My 8 month living my belief of being healed has been shattered with a sudden overgrowth of a lump in my breast and confirmed today by ultrasound and biopsy, it seems evident that the cancer has returned with a need for urgent treatment imminent. So here’s where I began with the post…
Anyone who knows me at all will be familiar with my tendency to be a control freak…and a tad OCD. I was thinking on that this morning in my prayer time and the questions is, how do I “let go” of things that are bothering or consuming me when I am plagued with that tendency?…that need to hold to that illusory control? Where has that come from?
So deeply ingrained in our being from a breakdown of trust in our past, where someone has let us down, hurt or disappointed us, we vow to keep a tight grip on our emotional reins in order to protect ourselves again from such a painful event(s) and develop our protective strategies to such an extent that we cripple our growth and our capacity to receive.
To let go means we must allow ourselves to be vulnerable. Already all the alarm bells are ringing!! What about all those walls we have put up? The strongholds we have built around ourselves with those impenetrable walls.
To be vulnerable means exposure to another’s capacity to change the course of our situation and possible override our control and challenge those personality traits not beneficial to ourselves. It allows an ability to heart-connect …raw and honest with one another, and more importantly, to God. We cannot heart connect through the wall. We risk being hurt when we let the guard down but also open the way for a chance of receiving love and grace.
Part of letting go of control and handing our situation over to God requires us to change our focus, from ourselves… to God and His goodness and ability, with praise and thanksgiving for all He has already done for us
What in heaven’s name causes us to doubt God’s overarching power to do what we deem to be impossible…or question His plans or purpose?
I am being faced with this very dilemma today. I made choices …. the 2 trees…about leaving treatment last year, that defied all logic…human logic, yet I felt confirmed and blessed in those choices. Even so, I still hung on to doubt because I had not experienced healing in the way I had imagined it should have been. Over the past year though, God has healed me in so many ways and has brought me through crippling fear and severe anxiety attacks, challenged all my preconceived ideas of who He is, exposed many barriers and questioned my belief in His love for me.
One major hurdle for me has been dealing with my disappointment. My children can confirm my use of disappointment as a bludgeon when they did not meet my expectations. One daughter scrawled it on her wall in permanent marker as a protest in her teens.” I’m not angry, I’m just disappointed”. I’m not proud of that statement or its long-term effect and even worse…its memory in the minds of my kids.
It is current still as I have prayed for some time now for a particular outcome and have not yet seen it realised. I still have a lump in my breast which, despite prayers, petitions and pleadings, has not been healed. I am well and have never doubted God’s promises that “By His stripes I was healed.” In the face of all Gods promises and declarations I have struggled to stifle my disappointment. That very attitude brings me before God questioning His plans and purpose. I have had to bring this word and its wake before God and confess it and ask His forgiveness for it and all its run on effects and consequences. I do not have the luxury of questioning God. More than once I have been given the Scripture in Isaiah 45:9
“Shame on the one who argues with his Creator, like one clay pot among other pots arguing with the potter, “What in the world are you doing with me?”
Recently, God brought me through a very tearful few hours to a place of complete surrender of all my barriers and walls.
I must let go of the attitude and once I give it to God and the past is confessed, it is forgotten and illegal to go back. It is not letting go for a moment…it is leaving it with God and walking away knowing the sin of that past is dealt with. Now we must move forward and never look back.
Easy to say….. but since then, I am forced to face a recent change in the nature of the breast lump. I have prayed so diligently for healing and for whether I needed to have proof of that healing for myself and others. I have accepted it as a “finished work” in full belief that my miraculous deliverance was just around the next corner…maybe once I’ve confessed this trait or surrendered that fault…am now having to go back and have it investigated. It just hasn’t made sense to me, but I did not dare doubt what I’d professed to be the truth of the matter.
My greatest hope has been to show the Bible can be taken as truth. That was my whole hope in my quest to live out the truth of what I believed to be God’s will…to “hold unswervingly to the hope that is in me For He who has promised is faithful.”
Proverbs 3:5-6 is a well-known scripture.
“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him and He will direct your paths.”
Having just this day had ultrasound and biopsy and seen the films, I am shaken and very emotional. It is a battle with my mind that requires me, in the midst of this to be constantly reminding myself of God’s word and promises and to not lean on my own understanding. I have no idea where God is taking me or why. Last year when I was in this same place, I rallied and took charge! I poured myself into research, poured into myself all manner of supplements, pills and potions, sought out all alternative treatments, elbowed my way through the medical system and defied advice in my determination that “God” was in control. Who again?
This time it’s a new ballgame. The cancer is back & I believe I’m being taken back to face my giant after a year of God challenging me about who did I really want to be in charge.
Ahhh, that sticky word TRUST again! And lean not on your own understanding requires…you guessed it! Letting go! Letting go of our need to know and to see in advance the outcome, to accept that God knows best and has our best interests at heart even when it does not make sense to us. Never has this truth been more real to me than now. Do I trust God’s love for me?
I am walking, one step at a time, one foot in front of the other, having to stand in the temporal truth of my circumstances but claiming His promises, trusting that His grace is sufficient for me this day and declaring, out loud to all who will listen, His authority, dominion, power over cancer (insert any other word that is true for you in this moment) and God’s goodness in all circumstance…the truth according to my faith and His Word.
Give thanks in all circumstances? That’s tough in the moment when the ground seems to give way beneath you…. I stood late last night in the dark of my living room, looking out at the moonlit yard and through my tears of absolute vulnerability & surrender, I declared…out loud…as miracles are in your mouth…(ie you must declare verbally your promises) the promises God has given me for healing and restoration and claimed His victory over that which I have no control…in advance…. and trust His heart for me. God is good. He is always good.
I have a fridge magnet of my mothers that now sits above my bedhead. I repeat this often to myself as a mantra of sorts.
TRUST IN HIS TIMING
RELY ON HIS PROMISES
BELIEVE IN HIS MIRACLES
REJOICE IN HIS GOODNESS
WAIT FOR HIS ANSWERS
RELAX IN HIS PRESENCE
Give the reins to over to God…and let Him reign. After all, He is Sovereign. This is my message to myself. Feel free to take it for yourself.