"Do not think that I have come to bring peace upon the earth. I have come to bring not peace but the sword," (Matthew 10:34).
Coming Home
I felt called to come back to the States for a month for physical therapy on my back due to a bungee jumping injury that happened when we were in Ecuador within our first three months. This bungee jumping incident cost me a lot. It cost me my health, expensive flights, it cost me time serving in the jungle and those relationships, it cost me time away from the Kiehl family, money towards physical therapy for five weeks, and it cost much stress and anxiety for our team. Embarrassingly enough, it has at times even cost me my own trust in God and the unhealthy cycle of bitterness that comes with all that.
Although all those unfortunate factors have been reality, at the same time I was full of peace to come home and to take care of my body. What I expected to be a smooth and somewhat speedy recovery process in the States, turned into a slow, frustrating one. My PT doctor shared I had been dealing with chronic muscular spasms, a neck that was too straight because of whiplash and not at its' normal curvature (which came with more intense pain), and altogether a body that was put through a lot of trauma. What I expected to be 3 weeks at the most of physical therapy, it was actually during the 3-week point where the pain intensified the most.
Begging for Healing
In my life experience I have always been blessed to be healthy. For the first time in my post-conversion life, here I was praying more for my body's health than I ever had, begging God for miracles, and coming to prayer distracted by the physical pain hoping He would take care of it, but then leaving with disappointment and emotional pain that God wasn't healing me. He was healing (which I'll explain further later), just not in the order or ways I wanted. I really was experiencing the real taste that so many people all over the world experience every day with chronic pain and/or conditions. A lot of days, I felt united to these people suffering both in bodily pain but also in the waiting for God's healing.
There are so many accounts of Jesus in His ministry performing miracles and healing those who suffered from infectious diseases, those who could not walk, could not see, He even brought His friend Lazarus back from the dead! And these are not stories, these are real healings that occurred. I myself have witnessed physical, spiritual, and mental healings happen because of the Lord in my own life and in the life of others. I know He is a God of miracles! I know He desires healing for all of us. I know He waits for us to have faith in Him and for us to receive all His gifts. I know this. Because I know God is a miracle worker, it was almost even more emotionally painful that I would come to prayer begging for His healing and the physical pain would get worse in prayer. I couldn't understand what He was doing. Doesn't He know I love Him? Of course He does.
The Truth
When I look at my time home in California for this month, the truth is, He has healed me. My pain when I arrived was at a 10 in severity, now, it's about a 3 and only comes in waves. My neck is stronger and the evidence is that I don't have to hold it up when I drive anymore. I see that He has healed me. Tremendously. However, I expected Him to leave no trace of soreness, stiffness, or tenderness at all. I lost sight of what He had done for me in this short month - I haven't even touched the fact that I also received spiritual healing at my parish through a program called 'Unbound' where I literally went through church sessions of being spiritually healed over the course of my life and any lie, trauma event, or hardness of heart in my life the devil had a hold on me from.
Stepping away from the real facts that have happened at my time home, my time here has been painted with miracles left and right. Going through Unbound in and of itself was enough of a reason to bring me home. I see that now. He saw so many things in my heart that needed to be healed from and that really needed to go through a cleansing of forgiveness from. There was enough of that alone that I realized were blockages during my time in Ecuador of not loving my teammates well and not being in the right frame of love to serve. My Father was ready to change all of that into something beautiful.
The Mystery of God's Healing
But I'm human! I could not see these beautiful, mountainous steps of healing I had taken with Him. Rather, I held onto the 3 point scale of pain (which were all minute in reality) instead of the 7 points He took care of. My doctor shared, "any progress is still progress." In His mysterious nature, He hasn't yet brought it to a complete zero, and a large part of me knows why. I have a lot of room to grow in trust. He knows I desire to grow closer to Him, so He uses the very thing I do not understand the most, is difficult for me to surrender, and thinks "This will be perfect and beautiful for her to grow in."
Which brings me back to that Scripture verse in the Gospel of Matthew, "Do not think that I have come to bring peace upon the earth. I have come to bring not peace but the sword," (Matthew 10:34).
What does this mean? Jesus knew that in His coming, it would cause division. There would be daughters and sons, mothers and fathers, a world in chaos that would divide itself from the teachings of Jesus and the cost it requires in following Him. He knew well that His life, death, and resurrection would essentially be a cause for questioning, persecution for those who believed, isolation from family members who did not understand, and even inner turmoil for many to grasp His teachings, miracles, promises and the real difficulty in trusting in all that He says that He is.
Interestingly enough, these words addressed by Jesus were given to the disciples personally. Why would Jesus need to tell the disciples the cost of discipleship and being a believer in Him if they already were following Him? The same reason why this message is for me and for you. As usual, Jesus knew. Jesus knew that even His own disciples would struggle to believe in all that comes with believing in His promises, His goodness, and His plans.
Matthew 10: 37-39
Later, Jesus goes as far as to explain, "Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever does not take up his cross and follow after me is not worthy of me" (Matthew 10: 37-38).
Us missionaries were faced with the question over and over again during training (and of course a perfect question for you), "What is the cost of discipleship? What is the cost of following Jesus?"
Everything. Don't we love that response?! It costs everything you got, and everything you have. Not to say God is one that just wants to keep taking things away from us, because that is not really what this message is about. It's a message of healing. What will it take to really love Jesus like we never have loved Him before? I think it would take a kind of love from us that is more like His...and if we know anything from the Jewish man called Jesus Christ, it is that His love was displayed brutally on a Cross. Our love, then, means to be willing to do the same. Not necessarily literally, but that we can come to a place of habitually choosing His selfless example of love over our ideas of what we think love is. The way of complete love is through the Cross, because with the Cross is always Easter. That is why it costs us everything to follow Him, because in our humanistic nature, this will be a life-long journey of giving over to God. We will never be perfect in love, only He is perfect. However, we always have a choice in loving as best as we can as He has loved.
For me in this time, it means giving Jesus my physical health to Him (which honestly is great, but the devil knows how to keep me in a place of fear of situations and things of the future that have not and may not ever happen to me).
He did not promise us peace on earth, He promised the sword...trials. But He also promises that when we lose ourselves to make space available to receive Him, it is there that we will find ourselves.
"Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it" (vs. 39).
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PS...All bloggy updates aside, I am returning to Ecuador and leaving in two days! First I will be going to Mexico City for a retreat reunion called Summit and seeing other missionaries from other countries. Pray for me. My body is feeling great, I have exercise plans from my doctors and was cleared from my doctor that there is nothing alarming or in his eyes a concern holding me back from returning. I have a lot of joy to go back, it's always just a continual prayer process of trust! Praise God for healing! Family time home was beautiful as well, I am very blessed.