(Part 1) My Story So Far...

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Even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast.

Psalm 139:10 (NIV)

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Since I was born, I have been blessed beyond measure in many, many ways. Over the past few years of my life, I have been particularly blessed with the opportunity of exploring my faith. For a long time, I was, what I liked to believe, a timid little sheep. Mindlessly following, waking to graze on grass, following the shepherd and repeating the process – day in, day out. I automatically subscribed to what I was brought up to believe, after all, why would anybody tell me anything other than the truth? I was going through the motions of what being a Christian child meant in The Salvation Army and accepting everything I was told on face value. My inherent ability to trust and believe meant that while I was able to say all the right things and conform to the culture around me, not much of what I said and did ran any deeper. I didn’t realise this at the time, but I was being a child and thus had no reason to doubt anything. Without the challenge, my faith remained shallow and wrapped in cotton wool.

It wasn’t until this cotton wool began to be pulled away that my faith began to shake. Friends at school began asking me questions; questions I knew the answer to but didn’t really feel them to be true for myself. Much like a swan, I was able to keep my composure to the outside world but underneath the water, I was paddling like crazy. I scoured the Bible for answers and I was like a sponge, absorbing every bit of knowledge and understanding I could get.

Just as I had begun to find my feet with my faith, the final bit of cotton wool was rather quickly pulled away. My hip slipped, and paralysing pain followed, there was no solution, no quick-fix, and much to my disappointment there was no relief. My already weak faith became non-existent. Why would God let me have such pain? How could He let me suffer so much? How could He let anyone suffer this much? If He loves me as much as the bible says, and is all-powerful, why isn’t He helping me? No one could say anything that would take the pain away, and no one could say anything to make me trust God. I had been paddling to stay afloat and now it was a storm and I was drowning. It’s safe to say that I soon hit rock-bottom, lashing out at God, at Mum and Dad, at anyone I could reach. Not my finest days that is for sure.

This continued for some time as the doctors tried to do everything to heal me or make the pain less. Then, on Maundy Thursday 2015, I attended my first multi-disciplinary pain team appointment and they examined me. They concluded that I had an abscess on my spinal cord and I needed emergency surgery to remove it which would either heal me or paralyse me. I was on a lot of painkillers so wasn’t fully aware of the severity of what I had just been told but I knew it wasn’t good. So, at my lowest, with the tinniest bit of faith, I asked God to protect me. I asked my family and friends to pray for me and sure enough, after further tests, I was told I didn’t have an abscess. My initial reaction was ‘Great! Back to square-one!’ This was followed by the relief of not risking permanent paralysis. In hind-sight, which is a wonderful thing, God was there in that situation, it could have been a lot worse. I could have been paralysed. He had begun to lay the foundations for building me back up.

This experience did lead me to toy with the idea that God was in the transaction business. If I behaved, was obedient, prayed fervently, then he would protect me and prevent anything bad from happening to me. However, this idea was fundamentally flawed for so many reasons not least of which the disciples who were closest to Jesus still faced hardship and many horrific deaths but they kept the faith. Yet again, God was in this situation because even though I had been in a terrible place, He had used it to help me understand my faith a bit more.

The final pain block procedure came. I went with little expectation but had began to pray again. Admittedly, it was not often and not very long but just short conversations with God. I prayed that I could be pain free even for just a few minutes. The procedure happened and as I came around, I cried. The pain, which was beyond anything I had ever experienced, was still there. However, as I recovered from the procedure, I noticed the pain had been reduced ever so slightly, but just enough for me to do some exercises that I couldn’t do before. It was in this moment, that God said to me – you will walk again. At first, I couldn’t handle it but as time progressed and I grew in strength I began to see that God was faithful and was delivering me from this chapter of my life.

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“I can do all this through him who gives me strength”

(Philippians 4:13)

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This was a verse of scripture which stuck with me and helped me to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Whilst I struggled with the concept of God giving me the strength to carry on, it was a much-needed light in the darkness I had faced. It is from this point that I began to rebuild my faith, God began to build me up, and this time we were rebuilding after a storm, building for the future, building with resilience and slowly-but-surely, building a storm-resistant home.

Even there, His hand still held me. In my darkest moments - I was not alone. So what can you take from the first part of my story? This - you are going to be OK - He is with you.