The Flog – The Fabry Log

I gauge my spiritual health by what I allow to overwhelm me. Whether it's financial or relational or some work deadline imposed (or that I impose), whatever causes me to doubt and fear and tremble shows who I'm trusting in. It shows whether I'm looking down or up.

Yesterday I trembled. I was upset. Ticked off at the insurance company. Even though I pay them a lot each month, our HMO has continued to deny coverage for our family here in Arizona. (In fairness, they have paid a lot for us in the past few years.) We'll appeal again, of course, but this is not what I need to spend my time doing.

I have blood test bills, doctors bills, hospital bills, and the stack is getting bigger. The money we've spent on nebulizers and charcoal and creams and shampoos and Vitamin E and Fish Oil and all of the other bottles in our kitchen is just unbelievable.

But we push forward, keep doing the treatments, keep eating well and drinking mud, and after all of our striving I still have children with nosebleeds and unexplained rashes and chemical sensitivities. That overwhelms me. Their future overwhelms me. Whether we can help them or not overwhelms me. Where we will go if we find our current environment is not good for us overwhelms me.

I'm not whining here, and I'm not trying to get you to send a check. Many have done that, by the way. Many we don't even know, and we are grateful. I don't know what we would have done without those gifts. I thank God for people who have shown such great care and compassion.

However, as wonderful as those gifts are, my hope can't be in the generosity of friends. My hope is not in an insurance company. My hope is not in medication or supplements. My hope is not even in my children's health. Or my own. Or my wife's.

My hope, my trust, my future is wrapped up in the One who is much bigger than a stack of bills, much bigger than our illness, much bigger than a corporation, much bigger than my fears.

I know that in my head, but when I walk into our bedroom where six people are sleeping and trying to recover from the physical and emotional toll this has taken, I'm overwhelmed. And it's hard to watch. It's painful to walk through. Just writing about the reality of it helps frame the picture anew for me.

There's a verse I recall from the King James. It's in 1 Corinthians 4. "For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory..."

I'm pretty sure Paul wasn't talking about insurance companies and medical bills. I guess all of that fits with the category "light affliction." One day we will be able to look back on this event as something that happened that we wouldn't trade. It will do something to us and for us that we can't see from this valley filled with cactus and scrub brush. It may even be something that draws people to God.

I know all of this is true. I know this is His story, not ours. But if I am honest, I have to admit that I'm still overwhelmed.