Losing my Religion? Keeping the faith with Lyme Disease

Hello, everyone
I started building a website a few years ago for documenting how Lyme has shaped and encouraged my Christian faith in the midst of suffering. I just made a facebook page for it to make sharing articles easier and provide a wider opportunity for discussion from the chronic illness community. I believe we are misunderstood and under-served in the Church and would like to hear about others' experiences and become a place of communication and encouragement.
Anyway, if you are looking for spiritual encouragement, fellowship, or ideas for how to connect with your non-Lyme brethren, I invite you to follow my Facebook page, or just have a gander at my website.
Nothing to sell, I haven't monetized anything (in fact, I pay my own money to keep it ad-free and do not earn money as an affiliate), just want to help others wrestling with this mess. (wait, that's not true. I'm an artist and my Etsy page is linked on my site, but its usually empty!)
God Bless!

FB: https://www.facebook.com/joyclammedia
website: https://www.joyclam.com

🔹RainyCloud said...
I really appreciate what you're doing.

Just last night I was wondering about what God wants me to learn through this whole experience with Lyme.

I'm not sure if I know what it is, or if I learned that "what" yet, and I might never know, but I know He is in control.

I appreciate your feedback! I have a whole series on "What I Learned from Lyme".
FWIW, it's enough to make me grateful for having Lyme. I'm a much better person, in every way, even if I can't work (yet) or travel as much as I'd like. My battle now is advocating for how horrible the disease is to those who don't get it, while encouraging others with how great the journey has been for me, despite the suffering. I feel like I'm lying no matter what I say!

Just launched a new series for Advent. I'm really nervous because brain fog crashed my writing frenzy, so the final articles aren't complete... but isn't that the point of the journey? When I am weak, then I am strong.
I hope to share in each other's sufferings and maybe each of us find a little joy in Christmas, in spite of, maybe even because of, what Lyme has taken.
God Bless
https://www.facebook.com/joyclammedia

I like this thread. It always inspires and encourages me to hear what God is doing in other people’s lives. Personal testimonies are so powerful.

@WalkingByFaith
Thank you sincerely for your encouragement. I was in tears as I wrote it, felt more like it was coming through me than from me.

I moved overseas and was forced into missing all the Christmas traditions I grew up with, away from my family, so I learned firsthand just how empty it felt without them. When I returned I was different, and immediately was sick. The last few years have been a nightmare, trying in vain to recapture some Christmas spirit - as Lyme took away my abilities and even when I felt like doing things, the stress of the holiday sent me into panic attacks. Christmas night 2016 was my first Babesia attack and I thought I was going to die.

Each year I've tried to simplify more to reduce stress on my Lyme and Babesia, and my family gets more and more distant. I'm tired of being called the grinch and a party-pooper because I can't handle a mountain of junk under my tree. I'm tired of feeling guilty from everyone else's over-commercialization. And they don't even realize it. I'm tired of people spending tons of money and privilege on an Instagram-worthy Christmas but feeling justified because they bake Jesus a birthday cake. I'm tired of people being too busy to help me in my time of need, becoming even busier with appearances and consumerism.

I feel like Charlie Brown.

This year I've finally come to terms with how much STRESS - even over doing my hobbies - affects me negatively. And I am striving to say NO to anything that is not beneficial to my journey or my calling to help others in theirs.

I am doing nothing for the holidays but reflect on Advent, and whatever cooking or decorating I have time and inspiration for at any moment. I might go visit my family but i might stay home. I am NOT stressing about anything, no expectations. Just living each day with gratitude and wonder.

And it feels amazing. The Christmas Spirit that glows in my heart this year is wonderful - I feel like I HAVE recaptured the magic, and ironically it comes from accepting that I have to skip Christmas. Lyme has been such a wonderful gift to me. It's the ugliest and most horrible gift but turned my life around.

@Wisco woman:
Matthew 7:7 says “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened."

We usually think of this verse as meaning that God will give us health and wealth and happiness if we ask, but I think it's even better than that - ASK for Him to heal your relationship, SEEK His will through his word, knock on his door and ask for Him to reveal himself and his peace.
KEEP ASKING, KEEP SEEKING, KEEP KNOCKING!

Before Lyme really taught me this strong faith, I had 20 years of wrestling and doubting and taking it for granted. I was a slave to antidepressants and the mood swings they put me through. I've said the most horrible things to God and hated Him. But I didn't want to - my desire was to be reconciled to him but I didn't know how, I didn't know how to make myself FEEL love or the Spirit or fellowship. But I kept asking and seeking. I hung onto my faith even when it was shallow and felt like I was doing it wrong, through deep hurt and anger and betrayal. It took decades and the plague of Lyme to really teach me the truth, but God was with me the whole time. HE brought me back to him in his way and time.

This is the story of the Old Testament - if you really read what the great judges and kings did, you'll see they were terrible people! David slept with another mans wife then had him killed! And he was known as a great man after Gods own heart!! But God forgives, God always brings his people back to Him.

Joni's first book ("Joni") talks about her time in the beginning, full of anger and sin and doubt... but look what God has done through her!

Don't give up! With Lyme or God!

Wisco woman,

Some years ago, I had a divinely appointed friendship with a Christian coworker during a pivotal point in each of our lives. At the time we met, I had been going through a real spiritually dry season and had gone through a period of questioning everything I believed and knew to be true to the point I thought I was losing my mind until God miraculously healed my mind.

This coworker found out she had terminal cancer right after we met. She had surgery and went through chemo and continued to work. She had so much JOY in the Lord and had more faith in Him and His GOODNESS than anybody I had ever known. Just being around her caused my faith to increase daily. She constantly told me how good He is. She knew His goodness in a real and personal way.

This precious friend believed without any doubt that God was going to heal her. Because she believed, I did, too. She finally got too sick to work anymore and took a leave of absence. A couple of months later, I and a couple of others went to visit her. She was emaciated, weak, and bedridden. I laid on the bed beside her and asked if she still believed God was going to heal her. She answered, “Yes.” I still believed, too.

Not long after, I had a dream from God. In the dream, I saw my friend standing in a river. Then her body went horizontal in the water and floated to the bottom of the river. Then she raised straight up out of the water with her hands uplifted towards heaven and a big ole smile on her face. I woke up troubled. I asked God what it meant - was He healing her or was she going to die and go to heaven.

The next day, her sister called to let me know she had died in the night. On an intellectual level, it was expected, but spiritually I was shaken. I distanced myself from God after that. It wasn’t that I was angry or hated Him. It was that I didn’t understand Him, and consequently, didn’t know what to do with Him anymore.

Kind of like in the Bible, when they were carrying the ark of the covenant on a cart. The cart got jolted and Uzza put out his hand, touching the ark, to keep it from falling. God struck Uzza dead for his disobedience in touching the ark, even though he was trying to help protect the ark. The Bible said David was afraid of God that day. (I Chronicles 13:7-12)

I never walked away from Him. I just didn’t want to talk to Him and didn’t know what to say for a while. Eventually I worked through it. You’ll work through it, too. Just stay open to Him and ask Him to help you trust Him again.

If we choose to trust Him and not reject Him during the times we don’t understand Him and are frightened by His ways, we will continue to grow and be transformed by Him. Sometimes we don’t see the transformation, because it’s gradual and may not look or feel like we would expect it to, but I believe God is always at work in our lives. One day our eyes will be completely opened to all that He has done in and through and for us, and we will see clearly the things that are hidden from us now.

@ WalkingbyFaith
Thank you for your story. One of the things I've learned through this is the absolute reality of heaven - it's for real, it is our real home, and it is our real healing. We focus too much on being happy in this world and fulfilling our dreams and destiny, but we have to come to understand that this is NOT all there is. This is a burner body, so to speak. It will be thrown away and the real permanent life is yet to come.

This can either frighten you, because it implies that this life might end soon, that you might miss out on all you dreamed of - a family, a career, travel; or it can comfort you, because even if Lyme takes it all, there is NOTHING you're going to miss out on here that won't be trumped by the glory of heaven.

I like to imagine heaven as the Bible says - a new earth. I like to think that if God created artists and architecture and music and nature to his glory the first time, that it will still be there the second time, but even better. I can still visit magnificent architecture and see the French countryside and sing and dance and paint and do all of it with with GIFT of creativity and worship. So I see it as a promise - I WILL be healed and I WILL (literally! For real!) enjoy life again... but it might be in heaven, not earth.

And if my idea of heaven is wrong, then I still know that it is glorious beyond words just being in God's presence, so if I miss out on all the things here, I'm not even going to remember it. I'm not going to care!

In other words, there is nothing to regret, nothing to miss out on, for the Christian with Lyme disease.

But there is SO much to gain, when we see it as a privilege to step out of life's rat race and rest - albeit suffering - and just cling to God. Healthy people are too busy and still depend on their jobs and health and social life more than they realize. When Lyme takes everything, you are forced into the brokenness most people never experience, and it's a gift to commune so closely with God.

God is not responsible for our pain. God sustains us through it, through these hardships. I refuse to believe that God is the author of my pain and grief. 1 John 1:5 "God is light; in him there is no darkness at all."
He does not tempt anyone with evil. That's the work of the enemy...

What God does is turn these things around for our ultimate good. It takes faith, to see it that way.

God did not leave me an orphan, let me be trafficked into an abusive family where I was sexually and physically abused, witness to domestic violence, develop anxiety disorders, get sick with lyme or let me be robbed of my true identity. I went to drown myself one day and God was the last person I would have spoken to and I asked him to let me go and he didn't. I raged and cursed and blinded when he didn't let me. But here I am, and I know I have a future as he spoke to me in my dreams. Hence my signature. Florence Welch's voice told me to go back. She wrote a song for me Dreaming, that is coming out this month. I write to her now and we're friends.

Isaiah 54:15 "Behold, they shall surely gather together, but not by me: whosoever shall gather together against thee shall fall for thy sake." God is not the author of evil. He didn't send Jesus here to chastise us for things that have already been atoned for according to him! Whenever I felt guilty for doing wrong, I didn't feel condemned by God, God always let me know that it's alright, comforted me, that I'm not evil.

I go into a lot of the hermeneutics, I don't mean to sound conceited or anything. I just know that God's character is not some narcissistic tyrant that does as he pleases, that's closer to man and the evil one.

With Uzzah, there were instructions. David knew not to attack Saul, even though he was afforded many an opportunity - he knew the importance of listening to him. All of these things seem absurd but it's all over the old testament, people disobeying Him, disbelieving Him. The Israelites with the bad report in Numbers, the man who gathered sticks on the sabbath. Neither did God make pharaoh's heart hard (he did that himself.) All the work of wicked, godless people, just like the pigs at the CDC.

EDIT:

Finally, 1 Corinthians 14:33 "God is not a God of confusion, but of peace..."

The thing about faith is that it is not black and white, Good and Evil, right and wrong. God is far beyond our limited understanding. I like the way Chinese Medicine puts it as the principles of Yin and Yang – they are opposites, but ALL THINGS have a yin aspect and a yang aspect. Yin and Yang themselves can each be further divided into Yin and Yang. They mutually CREATE each other, and they control each other. And finally they transform into each other. This illustration puts me at peace with my seemingly opposite beliefs, that Lyme is a horror but also a gift. That God is good and loving but also to be feared, to look upon Him would kill you, yet to approach Him through Jesus will save you. When I am weak, then I am strong. In my sin, grace abounds. I struggle a lot with these contradictions, but I don’t have to – they are not lies, they are the essence of all things.

http://employees.csbsju.edu/hjakubowski/classes/medewpublic/kaptchukch1.html

Pain and evil is predicated on the existence of Good. Simply put if there is no, good then there is no evil. Good does not need evil to exist though, does it? Evil is the absence of good. Simply put.

Wickedness is the absence of any good. It doesn't need to be complicated any further.

I can't agree with you and I do not wish to be disrespectful. I've made my point but it's quite frankly disturbing.
I cannot agree with the notion that God wants us to be double minded, bordering schizophrenic in our approach to life, suffering and our consciences.

Take care. Good luck with the blog.

The Dude Abides said...
I'm glad I'm not part of any religion -- especially this one. It sounds dreadful.

Religion can be dreadful if it is a false one. True religion is a relationship with Jesus Christ through faith in Him. The Bible says "Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned-" Romans 5:12. We are a dying people because of sin. Jesus Christ came to die on the cross for our sins in order to deliver us from our death sentence. "He who was delivered up because of our transgressions, and was raised because of our justification." Romans 4:25.

"But for the cowardly and unbelieving and abominable and murderers and immoral person and sorcerers and idolaters and all liars, their part will be in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death." Revelation 21:8. This is dreadful.

"For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord." Romans 6:23.

The true believer in Christ can say "Therefore we do not lose heart, but though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day. For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison, while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal." 2 Corinthians 4:16-18.

Thank you BabsBunny. I appreciate your end note. It can be a bit much to take at time, this illness. I've been really wrestling with it recently. The new testament, is very confusing, and I have issues with Paul's Epistles, parts of them anyway, not all of them. Discernment is necessary of course. I personally believe the bible contains the Word of God, not that ALL of it is.

BabsBunny said...
the authors have very strong words against the evil oppressors, but make it clear that evil "can't touch this." God is present, despite their best efforts to eradicate good.

I wholeheartedly agree. We should focus on the triumph of God and good over evil.

I apologise if I was at all offensive, I got a bit angry. I'm having a horrible time of it recently, fighting off seizures and the fact that I only sleep about 4 to 5 hours a night of broken sleep.