I used to be terrified to ask God to do His will in me. I would actually say, “God I’m not gonna ask You to do whatever it takes. I can’t go there with You.” Because I had this fear that He would put me through something awful. Something I had seen before. Something in my own house.

My mom was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis when I was 5. She was 32. It wasn’t until years later when she had lost the use of both her legs that someone tagged “chronic progressive” on to her diagnosis. Meaning she would never recover, and it would only get worse. For all of my teenage years she rocked along as just Mom. She may have been in a wheelchair but that was our normal. It was just our life. And it was awesome. And aside from the fact that she couldn’t walk, she was incredibly healthy. So when she contracted pneumonia at 56 and was in and out of ICU 3 times, had a feeding tube put in her stomach and an emergency tracheostomy so she could breathe with a ventilator, we were in shock. This was most certainly not our normal. And when she finally lost that battle on August 5, 1998, my view of God and His plans for me took an interesting, unspoken turn.

I was finally able to verbalize my fear about 4 years ago, when I admitted to a close group of friends that I never prayed for God to have His way in me because I was afraid He would put me in a wheelchair like my Mom. Now I realize Mom’s illness was not a punishment for her. I realize God does things for reasons we might never understand, and I saw people’s lives and hearts changed simply because they knew her and Who she clung to. But still, my human heart was afraid. If He allowed it for her, what would make me exempt?

It took time, but after saying it out loud, I started to feel release from that fear. And about a year ago, I said to God, “OK. OK, I trust You. Whatever it takes for me to know You best and become all that You created me to be, I’m in. Even if it means what it meant for her. I want it. Because I just want You.”

Now I have absolutely no authority on which to say I am laying here with a broken leg, wheelchair 10 feet away, because I prayed that prayer.  I have no idea if I’m in such pain as would make me choose childbirth 10 times with no epidural over what I feel when the Tramadol wears off because I prayed that prayer. And I have no idea if being bedridden for at least the next week and a half and feeling like a potato in a microwave when my family has to turn me so I don’t get bedsores is happening in direct relationship to that prayer. But here’s what I do know. I know it’s temporary, unlike the hell on earth my mom endured for 25 years until her body couldn’t take it anymore. I know it’s not coincidence. It is not by some haphazard chance that I’m here. And whether you want to say God caused it, or allowed it, or Satan himself tripped me up on that walk to the bathroom, or that the stars were just not aligned in my favor that night, I cannot waste this.  I know that in addition to my children, I have another audience.  Each realm of the spiritual world is watching my response.  I know I keep picking up my devotional book and reading things like, “If you have been praying to know more of Christ, do not be surprised if He leads you through the desert or a furnace of pain.” And things like, “God selects the best and most notable of His servants for the best and most notable afflictions.” That doesn’t comfort me because I think I’m notable. Far from it.  It comforts me because it says I’m selected. Not a haphazard coincidence. Chosen. Just like my mother was chosen to bear the affliction of MS because God trusted her with it. And she reflected His strength and power with her broken little body more than any other woman I’ve ever known. And if I have an opportunity to seek out like treasure just a fraction of the grace and strength which that woman was tapped into, and this is the only way God could get the attention of my stubborn, prideful, insensitive heart to make me stop and seek and listen and learn, and lean, then I’ll take it.

“It is through our trials and afflictions that God gives us fresh revelations of Himself. In order to receive any benefit from our captivity, we must accept the situation and be determined to make the best of it. Worrying over what has been taken from us will not make things better but will only prevent us from improving what remains. We will only serve to make the rope around us tighter if we rebel against it.  Make this story your own, dear captive, and God will give you “songs in the night” (Job 35:10) and will turn your “blackness into dawn” (Amos 5:8). -Nathaniel William Taylor