The physical pain is hard, but what is equally difficult in a different way is people not understanding how it’s changed you.
I will never be the same again.
Beautiful things have happened in me…things that have made me see how good God is, how loving and kind He is, things that have awakened me to the supernatural, and to supernatural healing, and to things that have made me aware of His presence in a way I have never known before.
The Lord is real, kind, and good…and not just because He is healing and has healed me, but because His presence is so beautiful. He is SO beautiful!
I will never see life the same again and I don’t ever want to see it the same again. I don’t ever want to be asleep, walking through life half asleep caring about what doesn’t matter anymore and what matters in the Western World: material possessions, achievement, self-sufficiency, selfish ambition, and things that aren’t eternally valuable.
*** The only things that matter are God and people. Only love matters. ONLY LOVE MATTERS! ***
John 9:25 ... He answered and said, Whether he be a sinner or no, I know not: one thing I know, that, whereas I was blind, now I see.
What’s hard is people not understanding how it’s changed you or what to do with you or how it’s changed you because it’s difficult to relate to them on the same level or around the same topics as before.
Cancer, or any life-altering circumstance, makes you a different person. It puts you in a place where what was important isn’t important anymore. It shakes you up for a time and places you in an in-between place where you are trying to find your way through to what God wants you to do in your life next. It makes you want to make life count around what truly matters.
It makes you pray with people on sidewalks, on buses, at the chiropractor. It makes you give strangers hugs and tell them that they are loved. It makes you send texts to family members and say, “I love you!” who may not get all this touchy-feely stuff. But it’s sincere!
Not everyone gets this and that can make you feel alone and sometimes ignored.
The things you used to connect with people over aren’t as important or of interest at all. Life becomes richer, and deeper, and filled with the love God puts in your heart in a way that no one but the person going through it can understand.
Conversations are deeper and it can be difficult to connect with people on the same level anymore. Some people don’t get this or get your enthusiasm. Although the majority of people have been supportive, some people who don’t get it are critical. It hurts.
And life for some people is filled with joy. It is for me! In a way I can’t explain, I have hope, hope unlike I have never known in my thirty plus years of walking with Jesus. I know in spite of the tears, in spite of the pain, He has made me alive!
In so many ways, cancer has saved me. Although I never want it back again after I am totally healed, I am grateful for it.
But some people think I’m faking it or avoiding pain, but Jesus has put joy in my spirit! This isn’t joy that I am choosing. This is joy that has been given to me from the Almighty. That is why I can confidently say: “No matter what happens, I will be alright. Everything will be okay.”
Some people don’t understand all of this and that can make me feel disconnected from the people I love with all my heart.
But I don’t ever want to go through life asleep with the things that don’t matter again.
I was blind, but now I see!
[Shana Schutte]
✫❤•°*”˜˜”*°•❤✫...•°*”˜˜”*°•.❤✫...•°*”˜˜”*°•.❤✫
