I spent a lot of time this past school year either in the bed, at doctors’ offices or on the internet trying to figure out what was going on with my health. All I knew was that I was in a lot of pain, always exhausted, couldn’t sleep at night and always felt like I was coming down with the flu. The pain was mind-numbing at times. I felt like I couldn’t focus on anything because I was constantly trying to figure out how I could get the pain to go away – maybe if I sat in a different position, maybe if I stretched, maybe if I stood, maybe if I applied heat, maybe cold would be better, maybe a support, maybe medicine, maybe a supplement, maybe if I changed my diet, maybe if I prayed for healing, maybe if I prayed for healing more. …. Maybe, maybe, maybe…. But God didn’t take away the pain and He didn’t reveal exactly what I was supposed to do about it. I knew that His hand was upon the situation, but it was still so hard to understand.

Why would God have me to battle all of this right after He had just given us the farm we’ve wanted for years? He knew that I had a husband and three active boys that I was tending to at home. I knew that He was seeing how I couldn’t keep up with the laundry strictly because bending over to pick it up and lifting it was more than I could bear at times. He knew that I felt guilty because my two older sons were having to do so much of the caring for their 3 year old brother because I often couldn’t lift him or catch him before he would get in trouble. He knew that we had so many dreams of gardening and landscaping our farm that I wanted to physically be able to do. But He didn’t remove the pain. Instead I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia, which is a basically a diagnosis of chronic pain with insomnia and fatigue for no known reason. That was not what I wanted to hear. My father was a chiropractor and I grew up very healthy. In fact I was always healthy until my last pregnancy, then it just seemed like I didn’t every fully recover. It was just so hard to understand, but God was teaching me so much.

As I was battling the pain and fatigue, my husband and sons began to realize just how much I needed them. My husband would lay his hands on me every morning before he left for work and would pray for God to heal me and to give me the strength that I needed to face the day. I think it may have been the first time in our marriage that he realized just how much I needed him. He had always seen me as being so strong emotionally, spiritually and physically, but now he was seeing me struggling to deal with the pain, exhausted and confused from trying so many things to get well and spiritually drained.

Likewise my boys started to become more protective of me. They realized how much I relied on them to do things for me. I couldn’t lift the heavy bags of horse or dog food. I couldn’t walk too long around Wal-Mart. I truly began to realize that maybe God gave me these three strapping sons because I was going to need them. God took all of the relationships in our family to a new level and it wasn’t always easy.