“My well moment occurred 11 years ago, when I was asked to speak at a Celebrate Recovery session. I went into it thinking I was in no way like the addicts I’d be speaking to. God graciously humbled me as I studied John 5, where Jesus asks the man lying by the pool of Bethesda, ‘Do you want to get well?’. I felt the Holy Spirit asking me that same question.
If I had to narrow down the most important thing I’ve learned about God’s desire to heal, in my 40 years of physical suffering with Spina Bifida, it’s that God wants to heal so much more than our physical bodies. He also knows that in order for that to happen, we have to want to be healed.
God showed me while I prepared for this speaking engagement, that I was addicted to something. I was like “them”. I was addicted to pain. Physical suffering had become my identity. But God desired my identity to be in Him alone, because I was made in His image.
He flipped my life upside down that day, just like he did for that man who had been paralyzed for 38 years and had a lot of excuses as to why he wasn’t yet healed. It’s so much easier…so much more comfortable…to remain in the spot that we know. But earthly comfort has never been God’s desire for us.
That day I asked God to make me FULLY well, in the ways he knew I needed healed. I asked him to make me whole. That my identity would start to shift and be in him and not in my disease. He’s been faithful to do that. 11 years ago, he told me to “pick up my mat and walk”. That’s what this painting shows…the woman’s mat is made of rocks and sea glass that I’ve collected from my hours with God on the shores of Lake Michigan. When God heals us…fully heals us…we don’t get to leave our mat (our past) behind. He tells us to pick it up…the white rocks and the black rocks …and go tell people about how He’s made us well.”
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