When It Just Sucks and You're Still Trying to Have Faith

If you’re still trying to have faith in the middle of all of this… this one is for you.

For months, I have prayed for healing, that my tired body would recover.

Today, the reality is that I am facing another major surgery.

I told God that I would praise His name loudly if He did what doctors said was impossible.

I had hoped to be present for my family in this season. My mom is facing her own surgery. My daughter is about to have her first baby. I wanted to be able to play with my grandson when he visits.

I wanted to travel to see my grandma again, maybe for the last time, and to spend time on the beach with my faraway girl.

And instead, this is where I am

When prayer for healing doesn’t look like healing

God answered my prayer, but not in the way I imagined. The answer is no, and what I am receiving instead is endurance.

It did not feel like I could keep going at first, and most days it still doesn’t. Yet I am still here, carried in ways I could not have managed on my own.

Living with chronic illness and limited mobility

Some days, endurance looks like simply walking. Other days, it looks like gripping a walker and trying not to fall as I go.

There is no real way to plan, and even getting around without a riding store cart is usually a hard no.

I watch people walk past my window on these beautiful spring days… and wish I could walk like that, just for fun, so badly.

It is humbling to be my husband’s patient more than his wife at times.

This is what chronic pain really feels like

I know not everyone would see this as a gift. Some would say it sounds hard, limiting, and lonely.

And they would not be wrong.

It does hurt. It is lonely at times. And it just… sucks.

Finding meaning in suffering and endurance

So why call it a gift?

It does not feel like a gift yet. It feels hard and limiting.

I am learning I cannot push through this or carry it on my own the way I thought I could. But I am choosing to trust what I have known over many years—that God keeps His promises, even when I cannot yet see how this fits.

Not because it feels good. Not because I would choose it. But because even here, I am not alone.

I am learning that we pray for answers, and sometimes what comes instead does not look like what we expected. Sometimes the miracle is not the removal of the struggle, but the strength to endure it.

Hope in the middle of chronic illness

Six weeks until surgery, and then months of recovery. But at the end is the hope of doing all the things my body has denied me in its injured state for so long.

When I am scared, God is there. When the bills come due, He is there. Even when the pain feels colossal and words slip out that I wish did not, He is there.

I am in a storm, yet there is beauty to be found. A new baby girl will soon join our family, and I will hold a newborn again very soon. A hug from my faraway girl and grandson as they come to meet her. My mother is being well cared for.

God is working in ways I cannot fully see yet. Not just survival, but more than simply being functional “enough.”

When you are in the midst of hard things, God is there with you. He is the God of all comfort and compassion, a place of refuge, and the light that leads us through dark valleys (2 Cor 1:3–4, John 14:26, Psalm 46:1, Isaiah 49:13, Matthew 11:28, Psalm 23:4).

Nothing is changing today physically to offer relief, yet I can still keep my promise to praise His name loudly.

There is hope, even when the answer does not look like what I asked for.

In this season, He will walk beside me with a bigger plan than I can see with my own two eyes today.

If this is where you are too, just keep going today. That is enough.