Though sorrows like sea billows roll

Hope has been very hard to come by these days. My health just seems to be deteriorating more and more, and we struggle with the doctors office to get information, and they don't even really have that much information to give. My issues are not only affecting my hands and arms and giving me horrible problems with fatigue, but I am again experiencing intense squeezing my torso, and I have started having vision problems, especially when the fatigue really hits. The doctors cannot figure out what is wrong with me. There is just test after test, waiting after waiting, lack of results after lack of results. I am hoping to have a test this week that will look at the myelin in my nerves and how it is functioning in my body. (Insurance has approved it, but the doctors office won't call me to set it up. Yet another stress headache of this whole situation) If this doesn't show anything, or even if it does, they might send me to the multiple sclerosis clinic in Denver to have a more in-depth work up done to try and determine if in fact it is MS.

With all this going on, I feel as though the words that people have been using to comfort me have just been hollow. If I hear one more person tell me that God gives the biggest trials to the people that can handle it the most, I might scream. Even at times the words of scripture have felt empty and hollow as I search for something to make it better. Hearing that God's love covers all fear in church last week did Very little to comfort me. I couldn't feel God's love. I can't feel his comfort surrounding me. I keep searching for devotionals or scriptures that really speak to me, and I just come up empty. Even music that once brought me to tears at the awe of how God loves and works in my life isn't hitting me with the same realizations and truth that it once did. I just cannot find something to bring me hope.

I don't say all of this to make you feel bad for me or for someone to try and call me up and explain to me how God really does love me with words that they think will be new and encouraging. I say this to share my weakness, my vulnerability, my admission to sin of not trusting God. And today, that sin was really brought forth to light in the sermon that Husband preached at church today.

²⁴ The boat was in the water, some distance from land, buffeted and pushed around by waves and wind. ²⁵ Deep in the night, when He had concluded His prayers, Jesus walked out on the water to His disciples in their boat. ²⁶ The disciples saw a figure moving toward them and were terrified.

Disciple: It’s a ghost!

Another Disciple: A ghost? What will we do?

Jesus: ²⁷ Be still. It is I. You have nothing to fear.

Peter: ²⁸ Lord, if it is really You, then command me to meet You on the water.

Jesus: ²⁹ Indeed, come.

Peter stepped out of the boat onto the water and began walking toward Jesus. ³⁰ But when he remembered how strong the wind was, his courage caught in his throat and he began to sink.

Peter: Master, save me!

³¹ Immediately Jesus reached for Peter and caught him.

Jesus: O you of little faith. Why did you doubt and dance back and forth between following Me and heeding fear?

³² Then Jesus and Peter climbed in the boat together, and the wind became still. ³³ And the disciples worshiped Him.

-Matthew 14:22-32

I feel like I've been trying to jump out of the boat on my own and walk on the water. But I feel like I'm sinking. Sinking fast and sinking hard. I feel like there is nothing that is going to bring me back up. If you look at the scripture, Peter was doing great when he had his eyes focused on Jesus. He was confident as he stepped out of that boat. But then it says he remembered how strong the wind and waves were around him. He let go of the truth of Christ and instead let his own fears of his circumstances be what he focused on. I, like Peter, am looking at the wind and waves all around me instead of fixing my eyes on the hope that Christ truly does bring. I am looking for things that speak to me, instead of letting the people around me and the scripture that I read speak its truth. 

The words that really hit me hard as I read this scripture in church this morning, was when Jesus says, "oh you of little faith." He is talking to me right there: "O Sarah of little faith. Stop looking at the waves of pain around you. Stop worrying about the winds of the doctors office not calling you back. Stop letting the uncertainty of the ocean surface prohibit you from trusting me. Stop doubting that I am there, and rest in the fact that I care for you. I called you out of this boat, and I am here to walk alongside of you."

Things may never get truly better for me, especially if it really is multiple sclerosis that we are looking at facing, or maybe something even worse. I know there will be many more days where the words, "Oh ye of little faith" are the words I will earn for the day. There will be many more times where I focus on the waves and the noise of my life instead of starting each day grasping Jesus' hand to walk steadily through the storm.  But, when sorrows like sea billows roll, I hope that someday I will be able to say, whatever my lot, you have taught me to say it is well with my soul. I am definitely not there yet, but this week, instead of searching for words and scriptures with my own agenda of finding hope, I will quiet my heart and listen to the words that He is speaking to me. I will step out of the boat He has called me from and trust in the hope He gives.

You liberate me from my own noise and my own chaos

From the chains of a lesser law You set me free

In the silence of the heart You speak

In the silence of the heart You speak

and it is there that I will know You 

and You will know me

in the silence of the heart

You speak, You speak.

-Audrey Assad