Everyone has Something to Say

Our nightmares each look different and they change as we go through life. There’s oodles of advice on how to get through each of them. Give it time, find someone to talk to, just push through, on the not so Christian end; just keep praying, praise God for each little thing, just keep leaning on God, on the Christian end. Of course though there are always the more tailored remarks but they all at least somewhat resemble the above comments. Our nightmares are something that not everyone understands. In fact they are each so different that nobody can completely understand any of them. 

To Each Our Own

As I am writing this my nightmare is the medical field and my chronic illness. It all started as something simple, a presumed recurrence of severe low blood sugars. I wore a cgm (continuous glucose monitor) for a few days hoping to get just enough data to try to get a real diagnosis, instead of an I think this is what it is, so that insurance would hopefully cover managing it. But, it didn’t stay that simple for very long. The data showed early diabetic numbers. So I saw a doctor who ran blood work. They decided it was best to send me to Children’s because while some of the numbers were enough to cause a flag it wasn’t enough for a positive. But, I aged out of Children’s within the next month of the appointment with my general practitioner. I couldn’t even get in before the age out that occurred on my birthday.

So we had to go on a hunt for a good endocrinologist that would see me without a diagnosis. We found one who ran a ton more tests all clinically negative but another diabetic test received a flag. It still wasn’t high enough to be positive. A different one that was checking something completely different was just low enough to cause a second look, but nothing has come of that. It’s been three months of trying to trust God and wait for his timing with answers. Three months of people saying they understand, when they really can’t. My body is physically capable of doing everything I want to do, but my brain doesn’t have the clairity for most of it. More often than it does, my body doesn’t have the energy to move. So much of the time I am on the verge of a collapse in more ways than one but I just push through not because I am strong or because I want to but because I don’t have a choice.

Nightmares Don’t Play by Rules

Sometimes our nightmares are only a few hours long and sometimes they last for several months or years.

In those times everyone means well but they truly don’t get it. Even when they think they do. My mom loves to tell me she knows. I know she means well. But she doesn’t know.

People at church are always asking me how I am doing, but the thing is they say it with visible hope that I am just magically better. But there’s nothing coming because I didn’t test just high enough. It seems to just be a waiting time until my body wrecks itself enough to cause major issues.

For some of us our nightmares are genuinely small compared to others and in those moments they seem inconsequential. But even in those moments they are still our nightmares. They are still the things that keep us up at night. For many of us those nightmares are the things that make it so hard to physically or literally lift our hands to God.

How Do We Carry On?

We’ve been told so many times to just keep praying and praising, or maybe give it to God, but no one knows anything else to say as we face it.

I wish I could tell you there’s some magical formula to make the nightmares easier and to make trusting God the easiest thing ever, but if there is I still haven’t found it.

The fact is I still show up. Before my youth group ended I was there early and stayed late. I’m in church and Sunday school every week. I mean sure, it’s not necessarily that I want to be. I mean, there are weeks I absolutely don’t want to go. But it’s not that I have to be, either. I am blessed that my parents don’t make me go if I tell them I don’t want to. It’s that I need to be. I need the truth spoken over me, even when the lesson is something about a healing or a provision from God that is just something I’m not getting right now. 

In reality those weeks are the hardest. But they are exactly what I need because when we aren’t seeing those things they are the hardest to handle. I would say remember but they seem to be at the forefront of the mind when you are waiting on God’s timing. They lurk right there waiting for the comparison game to begin. They become ammo for the times of blame and feelings of abandonment. But they are the heaviest truth. A reminder to carry on and trust. Even when we don’t want one. Even though every breath feels like you’re drowning in life. 

I can’t express how hard this is to look in the mirror everyday and not recognize the person looking back at me. The sparkle from her faith is not quite gone but it’s beyond dim, her clothes don’t fit how they used to. The fact is it always leads to begging God. The strength has turned her prayers of faith to pleas of desperation. Until all that’s left is saying “God please” over and over again.

What if our nightmares are just pleas from God to use us in big ways? His way of creating that impactful moment in us; even if they seem inconsequential.

In the end it’s not easy. There’s no magic cure-all for our problems anywhere. We will always struggle with something. The truth is it’s not the struggle it’s how we handle it. And whether we like it or not, sometimes walking by faith is just doing what we have to, to get through the day all the while begging God for something we aren’t even sure of what it is.