Health is such a strange thing. You don't fully realize how important it is until you don't have it.
I follow a couple blogs of people who have cancer, or people who are just honest about the struggles of life. They have been given the gift of writing, as well as honesty.
Sharing your ugly with the world so freely is such a scary thing to do. But I think Jesus has communicated something with them that is so important: suffering people need suffering people to come along beside them and speak truth, beauty, and hope into their life. For these women, the best way to do that is to write openly online.
Even though everyone's story is different, everyone has a different diagnosis, different family situation, different treatment plan, everyone can be encouraged by the same thing.
Everyone can be pointed back to Jesus.
Everyone can be told truth in the midst of their pain.
During some of the worst days of being sick, I would be sitting in the plastic blue recliner chair at the doctors office with an IV needle in my arm, letting the vitamins and minerals flow into my bloodstream, with Ellie Holcomb playing into my ears. Exhausted, body aching, and struggling to hold onto what little bit of Jesus I could see, I would always end up talking to another one of the patients beside me, as they were getting similar treatment done.
Their words were always honest about the hard of life. They were so desperately clinging to the bit of Jesus they could grab at that moment. They were struggling just like me. They truly understood what I was going through, and I them.
In that moment of understanding, we could share that bit of Jesus we were holding onto. We could share hope.
Hope is often so much easier said to others than to yourself.
When you speak hope and truth to yourself, it often feels fake and like a mantra that you don't really mean. But when you have to say it out loud, trying to convey hope and life to another persons struggle to get the dishes done, struggling to stand on their own feet for more than 5 minutes, struggling to push back at the darkness and see His face, it has more meaning to your own tired heart, as well.
Often times, we speak much kinder and much more hopeful to others than we do to ourselves.
We speak so harshly to ourselves.
I think that's why Jesus puts those people in our paths. To remind our hearts through their words of His love for us. He also to give us the chance to encourage others, and while we are offering them those words of hope, we are speaking to truth to ourselves.
Dear friends, in your daily lives, speak honestly with your friends, your roommates, the ones you share your life with, or the ones Jesus just plops in front of you. Often in doing so, we find that we're not the only ones struggling. In your honesty you are given the chance to encourage, to love, to offer hope to those who need a glimpse of His face.
We all so dearly need his tender, sweet, hope-filled, love.
