Needs

From J.E. Tada's A Place of Healing 
2 Cor 12:9
My Daughter, I have not forgotten your need. I have not overlooked your hurt, disregarded your pain, closed My ears to your cry for help, or in any way withheld My favor from you. I will provide for you, and I will continue to show My might through your weakest moments, honoring your faintest attempts to honor and serve Me.

There are times in chronic illness and chronic pain that, no matter how hard you fight the idea...it does seem as if God has not heard my pleas for healing. That my requests are too unimportant to be noticed, that I am not important to the King. Then, if you accept being chronically ill...there is a huge feeling of uselessness. How can I be useful when I cannot DO anything most of the time? When I clean house, I am sick for a week? Or when I travel to a dr, I cannot even drive from the exhaustion I feel, and how sick the car ride then makes me...how can that be useful in honoring God?
He really does care that I am sick; I cannot say why He did not chose as yet (or possibly until Heaven) to heal me...but I know that I am a near complete stranger to the person who entered this RA six months ago compared to the me now. I sometimes feel like that person was someone I read about in a book, "she" had such different ideas that I do now. So maybe I needed to change and that is why I couldn't be healed, and still I am changing? I do not know, but I do know that God has not left me alone to battle this illness. He is right there with me, and He has heard my prayers. He has provided many good things for me. I have many family members doing things to help care for me, and many friends doing things to help me;  I could have not had those things. He is providing for me, and I am grateful for that. 

Isa 35:5-6
I came. Watch for me! The help which you pray--more help than you can conceive--is just around the corner. Just over the horizon. Can't you see? The clouds are already beginning to part. I am coming with gifts of health and strength and joy and like like a fountain. I am making all things new.

Sometimes I wonder why God waits. Why we have to face whatever we face, and He doesn't make all things new now. Mainly I think because we made the choice to destroy ourselves and the world...I still don't know how He can exactly stand to wait. I suppose like telling a child they cannot have the entire bag of Hershey's minis...because the entire bag will not be good for the child, even if the child is very certain the entire bag of Hershey's minis would be VERY good for him. 
I'm tired. I'm tired of waiting for the peace, joy and healing that hopefully is coming soon. Life has been a life-long battle, as I am sure it is for any reading this...and I have a bit of battle fatigue at the moment. I am determined to continue, to fight the good fight and lean on the King...but I would much rather bask in the glory of Heaven and being free from the evils surrounding me. What peace that must be! 
I am a new creation...have been for many years. But I am a new creation yet again because of my RA. I honestly hardly recall what it was like not being this way. It seems like RA is the way it has always been...it sort of puzzles me how other people have the energy that they have, and do the things that they do. Even though I did those things shortly ago. I just don't remember. That, in a way, has provided a peace...just having amnesia towards the pre-RA me. And someday He will make me so new that I do not remember what it is like to be the me I am now, the me I will be, or the me I was. I will be so new that I cannot fathom being that new. Wow.

Confronting Chronic Pain (Recheimer, Steven, MD)
While this acute pain hurts, it is a healthy protective response that is usually temporary. Chronic pain is a horse of a different color. Unlike acute pain, it serves no protective purpose. Stuck in the "on" position for no discernible reason, chronic pain keeps sending pain signals after your illness or your injury heals.