My God is Greater

    "MY GOD IS GREATER THAN YOU," I screamed in my dream right before I woke up. I sometimes have dreams of this type, which often carry a spiritual meaning. I was declaring in the dream that God was bigger than the attacker. I don't remember much about the attacker, but I remember having to yell that God is greater very boldly. That is all I could really remember about the dream, but the phrase in that dream that echoed throughout the whole week, along with "The joy of the Lord is my strength". This dream occurred the night before I fell ill with Influenza B. I woke up from the dream with a feeling that something just wasn't right. I took my temperature and found I had a low-grade fever. 

    Right before Influenza B, I got done with a local missions trip where I came back with this desire to dive into the book where "the joy of the Lord is my strength" was written- Nehemiah. The truth is that I am the hardest on myself. One reason I am hard on myself is that I often feel weak. Why can't I handle this? I need to toughen up. I can't be this weighed down by stuff when I become a counselor; I will get compassion fatigue. When I got sick, I was itching so badly to get back to work. This sickness was unusually long for me, too. I had about 10 days of a fever, and honestly, I am still getting my energy back from it. This whole past year, I have been in the struggle of overdoing things. I care a lot, but struggle to cast my cares on the Lord. I overdo, and never want people to feel alone in their struggles. I feel like I fail when my own limitations come in. I feel weak rather than strong, and my limitations have really been made known this year. My God is greater than you... I mean me. I, the girl who often thinks she has to hold everything together. The girl who wants to get into the deep stuff with people. There is a difference between selflessness and self-destruction due to pride. Selflessness allows us to give up what others and ourselves are going through to the Lord. It is about surrender rather than the race to solve the problem. It allows us to truly be there for others. Self-destruction is where we get so weighed down and burnt out by problems (our own and others), thinking that we are the only ones who can fix it, taking on a weight bigger than we are, rather than surrendering it to God. 

    I think self-destruction has occurred for me partly because of social media. Mental health is often posted about on social media, which is not a bad thing. The struggle for me comes when I want to solve the issues everyone is facing. I want to be there for the friend who is struggling and make everything all right. I think that is a heart posture with the right intent, but it is not always something that can happen. People are going to struggle on this Earth because this world and its struggles are temporary. God did not allow struggles that come from brokenness to last forever, which is why we don't live forever on this earth. We pass into eternity with Jesus, where there is no pain. We need to have unconditional love for those with mental illness, chronic illness, and physical illness. We truly can't have unconditional love without the Lord, though. The truth is that I am not the end of an illness for anybody else; Jesus is. I can't solve all the problems, Jesus can. I have to stop this pursuit of trying to solve everything. I have struggled with that since I was so little. I remember one time crying after my mom picked me up from my dad's because I did not want to leave my dad. I wanted so badly for my mom not to notice, nor did I want her to get sad that I wanted to be with my dad. I told her I was mad at my dad, but then I did not want my dad to be sad, thinking I was mad at him. I just wanted to stay with my dad. I wanted every piece of the puzzle to understand that I loved my mom, but I did not want to leave my dad. It was complicated for me as a 4 or 5-year-old to communicate that. I also had a time of my mom and me having a supervised visitation, and at the end, I did not want to see her cry. I wanted to make her happy, but I had to leave at that time. I have always felt this pressure to solve everything in deep brokenness. The end of it all is not my ability to make things right, though, but it is Jesus's power to redeem. I can do my part of making things right through repentance and taking responsibility for my actions, but it is Jesus who heals hearts and Jesus who is the end of all the pain in this world. Especially in areas where I have felt I caused wrong and want to fix it; again, I can turn and repent from it, but it is Jesus who has the power to bring righteousness to the wrongs of this world. 

    Anyway, this illness was long, and I could not do much. I could not go to work. I could barely stand up because I was dizzy. I lay in bed almost all day. Even drinking and eating were hard. It took so much energy to just get up and get something. Throughout my illness, I was lying there thinking, "I am held". I could not do much, but I was held by my heavenly father. I often see people having these elaborate bible study times, but that week I was not reading my bible as much as I usually do throughout the week. I was not doing my usual worship dance parties. I was not doing and doing and doing some more, trying to earn something. I was just being held, and that was enough. I was just being held and being loved. I was saying to my illness, "My God is greater than you," and I appreciated that. I just appreciated that my God just expected me to be held, nothing else. I thanked the Lord often during my illness that, like in the marriage vows, he loves us in sickness and in health. One day, I went to the ER to see if something was going on. I was pretty much out of it at this point, but I had felt a joy in knowing that my God was holding me and we were figuring out what was going on. I did not get clear answers until I went to the hospital the next week. I was completely out of it but grateful. I did not feel a need to complain because I felt that everything, though my body was in rough shape, was right. I was right where I needed to be. I was being held, and not in my cycle of constant doing. That cycle was ending because the overdoing I had done had to stop at that point. I had to stop overdoing everything because my body needed to slow down. I physically could not overdo it, and I had to trust that God would provide and work everything out. 

    I am going to become a counselor. I am getting that education, but one thing I know right now is that God is making me a counselor. My calling is not an easy calling by any means, and God is equipping me to become a counselor. God is not calling me to heal people, but rather to give direction so people can go to the healer. God is not calling me to end the mental health crisis. He is the end of the mental health crisis. God is the savior of the world; he has the love that people need. God is the end. God is greater. I am an active participant in his greatness when my eyes are on him and not on what there is to fix. His greatness overcame suffering, and it is through him that I can be strengthened to help others. The reality is that there is a lot to fix: children being abused in homes just down the street, kids in foster care, alcoholism in families, substance abuse, broken marriages, and so much more. People have a passion for these broken things, wanting to help fix them. Our world has a deep need. When I was sick, I knew this. The kids I work with were missing sessions because I was sick and they needed those sessions. That can so quickly be turned to a point of shame; however, God is greater than anything I could ever do. I try to pray over the kids and families I have before sessions each time I go, and it is the Lord who grows each of us, including these kids. This is a process of trusting in God over our own ability allows us to grab hold of the many cares of the world and lift them onto him. 

    Two weeks of influenza is nothing compared to the eternity of worshipping the Lord. What we are going through right now is nothing compared to that eternity. I am not saying it is not hard and that it doesn't affect us; it surely does. The pain of this world even affected Jesus when he took on the weight of the whole world and became sin. The Lamb was slain, the scars were there, but his love was greater. His love is greater than my temporary pain. The pain feels like it cuts deep sometimes, but his love goes deeper. With that pain he took on, he has compassion for our pain. Because of his compassion and mercy, there is an eternity of worship and joy at the end of all this pain. We are not made for overdoing and being hard on ourselves; rather, we are made for humility, where we do our part and God does his part. We are made for more than what our overworked, overtired, and overly self-critical selves are living into. We are made for the Lord to do his will. We are not made for this world that has such a wide range of issues; we are made for the Lord who has already overcome. We are made to walk in the Holy Spirit, not exhaustion. Our God is GREATER!!!