Contentment

From A Place of Healing, J.E. Tada

Contentment is realizing that God has already given her everything she already needs for her present happiness. It is the wise person who doesn't grieve for the things he doesn't have, but rejoices over the things he does have. Have you prayed for healing and God has said wait or no? Will you be content with Him, and Him alone, even if your most fervent prayers are placed on hold? A tiny movement of my [paralyzed] friend Summer's wrist filled her with gladness. Strangely enough, that's the way it is when you have very little---life gets stripped down to the basics.


Ironically, I wrote this in my Journey Book more than a month ago, the black ink long dried and settled into the lined notebook paper. It was meaningful to me then, but exponentially more today. Today, if you read my RA post, I got told I have to wait to get medication of any sort again...that I have to wait even longer to get some sort of therapy to prevent damage to my joints and maybe take down this swelling (which is incredible by the way). So here I am, challenged by a note I copied more than a month ago. Will I be content? With prayer for strength to be content, I will be...it is really hard to have the idea of some relief within one's grasp and poof! someone yanks it away. God has provided a good primary doctor, and I have good pain relief, I am just limited now because the swelling gets to be so much and then the pain increases to make me ill. I cannot overdo even though my pain is less, because I am making it worse. God has been good...He has been with me all these lonely tear-filled nights, and helped me manage my hardest times before. He will carry me through this, and we will manage yet again. 

From A Lifetime of Wisdom by J.E. Tada
That is one of the best ways I can think of to know God in a deeper way. To be still and wait....on my bed, gravity works against me, and for that reason, I'm even more paralyzed when lying down. My enforced stillness has led me into a deeper firsthand knowledge of God through prayer. Through my prayers I may change the destiny of a life--or even a nation. 
Here is how I begin each night. I settle my mind and my heart to become as still as my body (which takes a while!). In the quietness I invite the Spirit of God to speak to me. I press my weakness up against His strength, my ignorance against His knowledge, my fears and concerns up against His calmness and tranquility. He gives you Himself, His intimacy as you search for a balm for your grief and answers to your deepest agony. 
Most of my friends with disabilities would agree that one of the hardest disciplines any of us must grapple with is patience. It's one of those lessons we have to relearn every day, many times over.

I spend a lot of time still, but not always remembering to use that stillness in the best manner. How much time we waste when we are being still and quiet! We waste the time because we do not spend it with God, getting the chance to know Him more, tell Him about our day (which He already knows), lean on Him in our weakest moments....I often have the sensation of clutching at Him as a small ill child will to try and keep mama beside them...Today is one of those days I am starting to clutch at Him, still being crushed by the news of no medication. How can I go on yet again, waiting months and months! But He is there, ready and willing to give me all of the strength I might need to go on, to study His Word and grow in Him. That is the most important thing I could ever do; better know Him. If I spend time today with a quiet mind, focusing and praying, I will feel better...even somewhat better physically. Likely that is because we are meant to commune with God, and when we do, our body actually works better than it "normally" does in this broken, poisonous world. I am so thankful for Him, that He is here for me...even if I have spent every day on my Journey book, perhaps my time was becoming stale. Everything we do can become so rout. I do not know how one can prevent that, exactly. Maybe that is part of the lesson I am learning. How to always keep that conversation with God a strong, fresh and amazing one. After all, I am speaking to and of the Creator...and if I stare at photographs that Hubble sends back with a expression of amazement and bewilderment, should not my King get more devotion? I think, even with the time I have spent studying, I somehow still let God out of being the middle of it. He was on the edge, like me, and the quotes became the center, even though they were about Him. Tsk, oh, what fools these mortals be. So easily swayed off topic.