Faith During Chronic Illness: A Powerful Story Found In Survival

63 | My Intestimony

Welcome BN fans to Episode 63 Faith During Chronic Illness: A Powerful Story Found In Survival

This week is a special podcast, near and dear to my heart. I often glaze over a shift I had in my life a few years ago. I was either still receiving EMDR or coming out of it and realized I needed a hard stop in my life. I wasn’t able to juggle as many things as I used to be capable of. I got overwhelmed easier. My body was processing all the emotions I never processed in the midst of my battle to survive the fight of my life when I was septic and hospitalized for a total of 7 weeks one summer with more surgeries and hospitalizations over the next year. All the while the in between times were just focused on recovery, resting, pasting a smile on my face when my young boys were home and trying to return to being Penny again. There’s a song by Danny Gokey that nails the feelings I had at the time that I couldn’t articulate very well:

You're shattered like you've never been before

The life you knew in a thousand pieces on the floor. { At that time, although I was out of the hospital, I was not well and I had no idea I would be normal again or for that matter “OK”. I was still at risk and being watched for the sepsis to return while trying to pretend I was OK and be a good mom to 3 little boys who needed a healthy mom and a wife to a husband who had to hold our family together while working full time while I was in the hospital for so long. He was recovering and surviving in his own way. Our worlds had been rocked}

The lyrics go on:

And words fall short in times like these

When this world drives you to your knees

You think you're never gonna get back

To the you that used to be. {I couldn’t push a vacuum and considered it a win when someone would put a basket of laundry on the couch beside me and I could fold one basket. We had fabulous land I wanted to landscape and work in the yard with my husband, yet he had to put a chair outside so I could watch and tell him what to do, but I was too weak to do anything but watch….Im a doer. Not a sitter. It was so hard!}

Tell your heart to beat again

Close your eyes and breathe it in

Let the shadows fall away

Step into the light of grace

Yesterday's a closing door

You don't live there anymore

Say goodbye to where you've been

And tell your heart to beat again

I chose to take that time of mandatory couch time to appreciate the stillness. To work first to walk to and from the front door and back. Then down the sidewalk, then down our long driveway. I had goals. They may have seemed small to most, but they were big to me. I was determined to be a good mom, wife, daughter, friend, sister….all the roles I played before my world shattered. In the midst of this I was managing a temporary ostomy that no one taught me how to manage. As my amazing extended family returned home more, I had so much fear in being alone. I didn’t want my kids to deal with the gross piece of my learning the tricks of ostomy care when the tricks failed. The learning curve was steep.

Returning to that shift in my life when my body was physically healed and we were living in a new city, but I was coming out of having EMDR, my brain was still a little taxed. I decided in order to return to the mentally healthy Penny I had to cancel pretty much all my activities and focus on building my time around my family, processing my mental recovery and learn to say “NO” without guilt. After a year of saying No and slowing down, one day I felt like I was ready, but ready for a new way of managing my time. I would only say “Yes” to the things that were a good trade of my time for life purpose and goals. I even publicly said this on a Facebook live. It was an odd declaration, but one that is public. Within a week, I had someone reach out to me about writing a chapter in a devotional book. I thought it a bit funny, definitely unusual, but I had just declared I would say “yes” to the things, even if they were hard, as long as they were serving what I had determined over the course of many years was my life’s purpose. IN that meeting about the book, where “Yes” was a no brainer as God had completely brought this to me, they said I HAD to have or do a list of things. As she went down the list of marketing commitments, writing goals and deadlines, she said and you must have a podcast to launch a book. I didn’t argue, but in my head, I had a big “NO WAY” to that one little checkbox. I am not starting a podcast. One thing lead to another and another story for another day, here I am. Doing the “hard” because saying “Yes” to the hard was my publicly stated goal. And this podcast has been behind my wildest dreams in fulfillment, challenge, expectations, goals. I love it. Every day. I love every moment of it. To tie a bow on those song lyrics, I know I am providing my own therapy. The final verse says: Let every heartbreak, and every scar

Be a picture that reminds you

Who has carried you this far

'Cause love sees farther than you ever could

In this moment, heaven's working

Everything for your good.

So, phew. We could end there, but today’s podcast is JUST beginning! With that backstory, and last weeks podcast on finding your purpose before setting your GOALS, I thought I would take an excerpt from that chapter I wrote and share a little more of the emotion behind my story. We had a word limit and if you know me, I have lots of words in my head, so its a zipped up version, but straight from my journals and prayers over the years and certainly from my heart.

I show up here on Becoming Natural most weeks with something practical—a natural tool, a remedy, something that’s helped me. And I love sharing those things. But I never want you to think I’m speaking from a place of having it all figured out… or from a life that’s been easy.

I come with experience. And a lot of humility.

Because I’ve been in the deepest trenches. The kind you don’t forget. The kind that change you forever. And even though it may not look like it now—because God has done a lot of restoring—I HAVE walked a very long, very painful road.

I know what it’s like to pray for years. To believe God can move… and still not understand why He hasn’t yet. I know what it’s like to wrestle with faith when the suffering doesn’t make sense.

And I don’t ever want anyone listening to give up. Not on prayer. Not on faith. And definitely not on the incredible power God has to write a story that’s bigger than what you see right now.

Every one of us has a story. And some of the most powerful ones are written in the waiting… in the years… in the moments when faith is all you have left.

Because if faith only exists when things are easy—what does faith really mean?

This excerpt comes from a book I contributed to More Than Enough: The Silent Struggle of a Woman’s Identity. It was written from inside that hard place. Not with answers. But with trust.

This is My Intestine-mony.

pe and a future.” (Jeremiah: 29:11

As I close today, I want to say this carefully—because it matters.

Healing doesn’t always look the way we want it to. Sometimes God brings healing here on earth. And sometimes the healing we’re promised is eternal. What faith asks of us isn’t control over the outcome, but surrender to the One who already knows the whole story. I came to the end of my strength and finally released control, trusting that even if God’s plan did not include healing my body in this life, I would still entrust my life and my story completely to Him.

Scripture tells us that our faith is refined by fire—not so we get everything we ask for, but so our trust in God grows deeper and more genuine. That refining shapes us in both the struggle and the wins.

For a long time, I thought God was working only in my body. But I see now He was working in hearts—mine, and the hearts of everyone who prayed for me and walked this long road beside me. This testimony didn’t just strengthen my faith. It strengthened theirs too. I’m not sharing this from a place of having it all figured out. I’m sharing it from a place of having lived it. From the hard days, the long prayers, and learning to trust God when I didn’t have answers. It comes from survival. From years of prayer. And from learning to release control and trust God’s will, even when I didn’t understand it.

So if you’re still waiting, still praying, still surrendering—please don’t give up. God is not absent in your waiting. He is with you in it, shaping what you cannot yet see, and holding every part of your story with faithfulness. God hasn’t stepped away from your story. He’s right there in the middle of it—faithful to finish what He began.

If my story resonated with you, I invite you to read more stories from women who have wrestled with their identity and found they are more than their struggles. More Than Enough: brings those voices together, including my chapter, “MY Intestine-mony”…a chapter 25 years in the making. They make great gifts for any woman in your life that needs some encouraging words.
You can grab an autographed copy at becomingnatural.com/books.