There’s a quote that I’ve heard many times before. Actually, a few quotes that are part of the Christian world that I’ve thought about lately. When thinking about these quotes, I realize how untrue they seem to me now.
“God gives the toughest battles to the strongest soldiers.”
“God doesn’t give us more than we can handle.”
In reference to both, I think they are wrong. After the last eight months, there are a few things I’ve realized and one of them is how weak I am and also how much I need God.
I am weak but my God is strong.
Back in February, I started to feel very sick. Since the beginning of the year, I was getting sick and had a lot of back pain and sometime stomach pain and I wasn’t sure why. In February, I started to feel sick everyday. I was nauseous and even most days, l was throwing up.
By March, I was throwing up nearly every day. By the end of March, I could hardly eat. By coincidence, the end of March is also when the world shut down because of a global pandemic.
I’ve never really been that sick before and I kept thinking it was going to pass. I prayed days and nights that God would heal whatever was happening in my stomach. I asked not to be sick many days because I was so tired of throwing up. Over the course of the first two months of the lockdown, I dropped 25 pounds.
At this stage, I realized I need to see a doctor. I’ll spare you the journey it took for me to get answers but after two Endoscopies, the doctor diagnosed me with severe Peptic Ulcer Disease. He found a bleeding ulcer in my stomach, and in the second endoscopy, he found more ulcers in my small intestine. My stomach was also starting to be blocked from the scar tissue of the ulcers trying to heal. He decided to put me on a liquid diet to see if the scar tissue could slow down but at that point, even liquid was hard for me to keep down.
Through July, I was still getting sick every day or every other day. You can imagine that many days I was in tears. I felt very isolated because I couldn’t eat what others were eating, and I couldn’t even go the whole day without being in bed from not feeling good. In the beginning of August, the doctor finally realized that I would need surgery. In my mind, I knew it was heading that way but nothing could have prepared me for the way I saw God in the month of August or the pain that this surgery would bring.
God is still in the business of miracles and the reason I know that is how God blew down the doors of funding for my surgery and how everything lined up perfectly. Within a week of hearing I needed surgery, I had fundraised all of the money.
On August 15, I went into the hospital here in Pretoria, South Africa and later that afternoon I was out of surgery. The doctor needed to take out part of my stomach and he took out my small intestine and replaced it with some of my large intestine and then stitched it back up. There’s very fancy words for the procedure but that’s essentially what he did.
I spent the first night in ICU in unimaginable pain. It felt like my stomach was being ripped apart each second. The next day they transferred me to the regular ward and I spent the next 6 days in the hospital. Through the nights I would pray to the Lord to remove the pain. I know so many people were praying for me during this time and looking back I know it was the prayers of others that were carrying me through the pain.
In the hospital, I had to relearn how to move around. The first few days I tried to walk, I fell a few times and nearly passed out. Each step of the way I imagined Jesus holding me, walking next to me and in front of me. He was with me each step of the way.
It’s now been a month since the operation and I can’t help but be so thankful to God and how He has brought me through this and continues to carry me in the hard moments.
Like I said in the beginning of this, I have learned how weak how I am, but that I am in so much need of my strong Savior. He carried me through each moment. He was my strength when I had none. He was my legs when I couldn’t walk. He was the one who was there on the nights I was crying from the pain. Over the last 8 months, He’s carried me through each moment. He’s the one who sent me people, friends and family, who have prayed for me and lifted me up in this time.
I know healing is a journey. There are still days that are very hard but what I do know is that my God is walking with me. He’s still there in the moments I don’t think I can walk further or fall asleep from pain. He’s sent people to pray on my behalf that I am so thankful for. He’s there and He sees it all - and He still loves me. He still gives me strength each day. He meets my needs every moment - despite of the worst parts of me.
That is love. I’m thankful that I am not strong and that God is. I’m thankful that I need Him because I couldn’t have made It through these last eight months without Him.
“That’s why I take pleasure in my weaknesses, and in the insults, hardships, persecutions, and troubles that I suffer for Christ. For when I am weak, then I am strong.” - 2 Corinthians 12:10
