Do you want to get well?

If we’re being honest, we are all suffering from some ailment - whether it’s chronic pain, anxiety, depression, obesity, perfectionism, people-pleasing, lack of self-esteem, self pressure, etc. The list goes on. That’s the reality of being human.

Unfortunately, Western Medicine has conditioned us to think that it’s someone else’s job to make us feel better. We go to the doctor to figure out what’s wrong and expect them to fix us. When we break an arm or come down with an illness this is what we need. But for so many issues, our health is much more complex than just a simple pill or the quick fix that our fast-paced lifestyle demands. After years of seeking out doctors and still no answers, I learned that I was the best advocate for my own health. No one was going to care about my being well as much as me.

Do you want to get well?

What a silly question. And actually, kind of offensive. Of course everyone wants to get well. But so often we can get stuck in the struggle, especially when others tell us that we are a certain way or that we’ll never recover, that it becomes part of our identity.

After suffering for years, if I wanted to get well, I learned that it was up to me. Now, I want to make it clear that I don’t believe I healed myself - I believe that God healed me. But just like how God gives us the option to accept His salvation, I believe He asked me to do my part in my healing journey. And it took openness, surrender and commitment to allow His healing power to flow through me. I believe that God gave me the understanding that I needed to receive in order to recover through my doctor’s treatment approach, sermons preached from the pulpit, and the power of the Holy Spirit. 

I had to forget about the damaging words that had been said to me from doctors that were trying their best within the scope of their practice. And I had to abandon the patient identity I had been given.

Unfortunately, it was not the quick fix that I wanted. But I learned that if I was going to experience true healing it was going to take time.

The first step towards my recovery was acknowledging my need to rest.

In 2014, nine years after my car accident, I finally hit rock bottom. My functional neurologist insisted that I remove myself from my current environment and go on a disability leave from work. This was the first time that I fully explained to my family the reality of how I had been suffering since my seizures in 2009. I hadn’t meant to hide this from them. I had put so much energy into trying to live a “normal” life that I hadn’t grasped the severity of my condition. My body felt like it was shutting down. It was giving me warning signals that something needed to change.

Healing began with changing the pace at which I was living my life.

This was a scary decision to make, one that I avoided, and was a reality I needed to learn to accept - I was 24 years old, married only a year, and I was on full-time disability. There was a new weight on our marriage. Our focus shifted from trying to enjoy newlywed life to a never-ending list of questions we couldn’t answer about our future. We painfully wondered if we would ever be able to have a family - how could we possibly take care of a baby when my medical challenges had become all-consuming?

While on disability, I enrolled in a pain management program that doctors had referred me to since I was a teenager. For years I resisted the program. Enrolling seemed like conceding that I would be in pain for the rest of my life.

Fortunately, God brought me to this specific pain management program in His perfect timing. It wasn’t about just coping with the pain - it was a time to get well. An unconventional doctor, Dr. Huggins, had recently been hired and had revolutionized the program. She was the first one to tell me that I didn’t have to be in pain for the rest of my life.

And I learned to abandon the diagnosis I had been given.

It was during this program that I started to build a foundation of understanding pain, how it relates to the brain and how mindfulness would play a significant role in my recovery. It was through mindfulness that I learned how to slow down for the first time in my life.

After the program ended, I continued to be treated by Dr. Huggins for the next few years.

She asked the question - “Do you want to get well?” She believed her treatment method could help me do just that.

Within weeks, my pastor preached that Jesus had also asked the question “Do you want to get well?” I was blown away by the parallels I began to draw from my visits to church and the doctor’s office. The impossible now seemed attainable. And for the first time I honestly asked myself, “Did I want to get well?” I was finally ready for the healing that I longed for - the healing that had been planned out for me way before my accident in 2005.

I knew that my life had been spared for a reason, but I never could have dreamed of the purpose I’d find in the pain.

So my question for you is simple - Do you want to get well?

Is there a change in your life that you need to make so that you can slow down, remove yourself from what’s called the “medical merry-go-round”, and open yourself up to God’s healing power in your life?

The Bible teaches that because of the fall, pain and suffering are a part of the human experience. However, I believe that Satan wants to twist this Biblical truth to make us believe the lie that things will never get better. We can’t know where our unique path will lead or the ways God will heal us, but we can trust that the healing that He longs to provide us on this earth is far greater than we could ask for or imagine.