God finishes what He starts.

"Who do I have in heaven but You? 

And earth has nothing I desire besides You. 

Though my heart and my flesh may fail, 

God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever...

I have made the Lord God my home. 

I will tell the world of all He has done!" 

Psalm 73: 25-28

I am no stranger to sickness. I was only eleven when I found out I had scoliosis - curvature of the spine. The treatment for scoliosis at the time was wearing a full body brace - an ugly beast of hard white plastic held together by four velcro straps and eight metal pieces to secure them in place. The first time I tried it on, it felt like a physical cage wrapped around me. It pressed into my bones and it hurt. The doctors told me I had to wear it 23 hours a day for the next 5 years - or at least until I was done growing. It ruined me overnight. 

Eleven is already so hard. Eleven is when you start caring about what you look like and what your friends are wearing. Eleven is when you start to have crushes on boys. Eleven is the beginning of middle school and trying to fit in. I wanted to wear cute clothes and have all the "right" friends. I settled for wearing men's sweatshirts and baggy jeans, hoping nobody would notice that I was different. I didn't want anyone to hug me and feel this hard plastic wall where my back should have been so I gave up on making friends. I isolated myself and constantly wondered why I was chosen to have this disease. 

It lasted for five years. Longest five years of my life. I started starving myself in high school because I knew that if I gained any weight, the doctors would make me a new brace - a bigger and clunkier one. The more I focused in on my problems, the smaller and smaller my world became. It was all about me. Me me me. Why was I chosen to have this. If God is so great, why can't He just heal me now? Maybe He doesn't love me enough. Maybe He isn't real. 

I must have hit rock bottom at some point because I had nothing left to cling onto but Jesus. Not physical beauty. Not friends and popularity. Not even my own self will and confidence. I realized that everything and anything could be taken away from me in a moment. And it had been. Everything but Jesus. No matter how much kicking and screaming and crying and begging I did in self-pity, it never affected the deep love He held for me. While everything else in the world started spinning mercilessly fast and out of control, His love for me stayed constant. Through the deepest pain and self-inflicted loneliness, I found peace in my Savior Jesus. When I look back on those years that I still don't wish to re-live, my heart can't help but turn to praise. Thank You Jesus that You loved me enough to seek my heart through the storms of sickness and loneliness. 

Thank You Jesus that in the darkest of times, I discovered the light that is You. 

Those difficult five years of brace-wearing changed my life. I started gravitating towards the lonely, the disabled, the discarded. Because I was broken too and I had found Jesus in that place. He was also one them. He was one of us. 

When I look at my students with special needs today, in NYC and in Uganda, I feel like God must have given me eyes to see them the way that He does. Beautiful, hilarious, wonder-filled, intelligent - chosen and dearly loved by the King. That question I used to constantly ask Him when I was eleven to sixteen years old, "Why was I chosen for this kind of life?" He seemed to answer so clearly. It is because I loved you. 

Arafat in worship. Singing to Jesus in Uganda <3. 

Now I'm battling a new kind of sickness. Stress induced hives. They started coming every night in October. Red itchy hives that cover my entire body and culminate on my face and scalp. There was a point in time that I thought I would lose my job and not be able to graduate on time because of it. I prayed for a miracle and He has been healing me gradually over time. In October they came every night. By November it was once every few nights and I rejoiced because of it. By December it was only twice a week. And now that it's February, I'm sick of being sick and am believing for full healing. 

When the hives get really bad, I turn my heart directly to Jesus. I pray fervently and when I do, I feel them going down. But I'm also aware that I'm not fully healed. I don't want to get used to being sick all the time because I wasn't created to live this way. I don't want to settle for sickness, settle for depression, or settle for complacency in my faith just because the healing isn't instantaneous. Jesus doesn't start things and not finish them. I know that full healing is coming - and I won't let the fact that my healing has been gradual stop me from giving thanks. I'm learning to rejoice for every little bit of healing God gives me as He gives it. I'm learning not to settle for half-healed or half-finished anymore. 

God makes everything beautiful in His time. The Bible says it in Ecclesiastes 3:11. If it isn't beautiful, He isn't finished yet. 

I'm finding that this truth applies to anyone battling physical sickness or disability, but also disabilities of the heart including fear, apathy, and depression. For 5 years in and after college, I settled for a life of depression. Depression that came from looking to men for the love and acceptance that only God can fill. I felt inextricably hurt. Seriously, torn apart. The tragedy wasn't the pain but the fact that I got used to it. Maybe this is the way I am supposed to live, I thought. Maybe God wants to keep me in this permanent state of half-healed, half-broken, so I can be more empathetic and compassionate towards others. So I can be closer to their pain? I started creating complicated explanations for a God whose love is supposed to be simple. 

God's love for us is simple. He wants to fill our joy to the top and He wants to heal us to the full! He loves to make the most broken things beautiful and if it isn't beautiful, He isn't finished yet. Don't settle for half-healed or half-finished. He isn't finished yet. Tonight I'm believing for full healing from hives and full healing from injuries of the past. I am convinced that full, 100% healing is available in Jesus. 

What are you believing for tonight? 

I believe He wants to pour out oceans of healing from heaven and is just waiting for us to ask. 

God's not One to leave things half-healed and half-broken. He finishes what He starts. 

Photo credits: Abide Family Center