When Illness Overwhelms, but God Sustains

Proverbs 18:14 and the strength to endure

The spirit of a man will sustain his sickness, but who can bear a wounded spirit?

Disclaimer: this is going to be a different type of post than you might be used to me posting due to illness. Please bear with me. Thank you.

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Some of you may have noticed I’ve been relatively absent from posting articles on here. That’s because I’ve become ill again. I guess you could say I’m always Ill as I struggle with multiple chronic illnesses on a daily basis but I have recently over the last seven months developed a new illness that has progressively gotten worse over the last two months.

This illness causes me to experience profound exhaustion, pain, flu like symptoms and others that take me out for days or even weeks after any kind of exertion. A 10 minute shower or even a 10 minute drive can land me in bed 100% drained, in debilitating pain in a darkened room for days. It’s been very difficult to exist and my quality of life has been very poor.

Because of this, I have been pretty crushed in spirit. The prognosis for what I have doesn’t look good as there is no cure for the illness. However, since I developed this illness seven months ago, there is some hope for recovery.

I have been low in mood and crushed in spirit because I’m grieving my healthy life. Even though seven months ago I was dealing with other chronic illnesses, I was still doing better then than I am now and it’s heart breaking to think that at 27 years old, I’m living my days exhausted beyond measure and in the worst pain and agony from my symptoms in a dark room unable to do anything other than rest. And when rest is all you’ve done for months and months and months, it gets exhausting.

But this morning, as I asked God to lead me to where He wanted me to read for our quiet time, He led me to Proverbs 18:14. It says: “The spirit of a man will sustain his sickness, but who can bear a wounded spirit.” How spot on is this verse for my current situation? When I opened my Bible to proverbs 18 I didn’t know what to expect. I just knew God was going to show up on the page in some way.

This verse reminded me in the sweetest way that mindset matters and that while my circumstances may not change, my faith and relationship with Jesus will carry me through this tough time. If I focus on God, the suffering won’t be so bad. It won’t cease to exist, but my God will walk with me through it every step of the way. If I choose to focus on how I’m feeling and on my illness and its potential prognosis, I’m not fixing my eyes on the things above and in the long run I’m causing myself more pain.

So today, I’m making a pact to think back on this verse often. To know that God is with me and that I’m going to be okay, even if the situation doesn’t show it.

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I hope that even though this post carried a heavier topic that you could find some sort of encouragement in its message. That no matter what you may be facing - whether that be sickness or something else - that God is with you and will carry you through.