When the right side of my upper body, while on the plane to Australia, became immobilized with pain, I knew it all too well.
My symptoms, pre-spine surgery, had returned with a vengeance.
I had trouble typing again.
At once, my worst fears flooded back. Anxiety kicked in. Maybe the surgery failed. Maybe another part of my spine gave way. Perhaps I’d unwittingly reinjured myself.
For days, as I struggled to prepare myself to speak on stage to audiences of various sizes, I held back tears as I asked God, “How can life be worth living if…”
As the Lord met me, I thought about the heroes of the faith that I’d looked up to, one of whom is @bob.sorge – one of my favorite writers- a pastor and worship leader who had lost his voice through a painful vocal cord injury and the testimony he lives by today.
I felt the Lord ask if I’d be willing to consider my life worth living not based on my comforts or conditions, but because what He’d done for me.
As I grappled with the very real idea and possibility of living life with chronic pain or being limited in my ability to write or type or even speak someday, this is what He taught me.