Rain

James 5:15 & 18  15"Such a prayer offered in faith will heal the sick, and the Lord will make you well. And if you have committed sins, you will be forgiven.  18"Then he ( Elijah) prayed again, the sky sent down rain and the earth began to yield its crops" Parentheses added (NLT)

I still believe that God is my healer even though I have no clue why the illnesses I have endured persist.  So, like the persistent widow, I will keep praying until the day of  healing and victory.  It is hard to stay persistent when I quite frankly, I don't feel like it.  I have spent the last week alone in San Francisco receiving two hours of treatment daily and finally the ever pleasant nerve block.  I worry that the treatment has caused me to flare up the  symptoms a little.  I try to not freak out about it and trust that God has it all figured out.  I believe that he is sovereign and there is a lesson to be learned in all of this and I hope to find out sooner than later.

I am feeling so very low as I wait for the jet that will take me home.  I hope that this will bringing out of the depression sneaking up on me.  The symptoms of the eating disorder also flare despite my effort to eat as a normal person with out an eating disorder would eat.  Again, not actually knowing what this looks like, I end up failing and purge.  The first night, I do not beat myself up, but try to use it as an opportunity to figure out what triggered the event.  I met a good friend that I hadn't seen in over a year for dinner.  What are the chances of us being in San Francisco at the same time.  It felt so good to see a familiar face in a strange city and to feel her embrace.  Was it an issue of sabotaging the good times of my life once again?  I think I often lose track of my food when I am present and engaged with people, then once alone, I panic.  I have been feeling so thick and uncomfortable in my body lately that the panic, that I have been able to keep to an annoying drip like that of a leaky faucet,  began to flow from a stream, to a river, to a cascading waterfall.  Once It began there was no holding the food in.  Where as sometimes I start the process and can hold it in check like turning on the faucet allowing a little to escape then I quickly turn it off.   This time, maybe it was the isolation I felt in the lonely hotel room, as well as the opportunity of being alone, I didn't even attempt to shut it down. I opened up my gut and watched my food pour out of me.  Empty!  My body felt felt not only empty, but depleted and it seemed to void the beauty of the reunion.  How Could I forget that the shame of the purge is so much worse than the discomfort of being full?

Maybe it was needing something to control as I have no control over my nerve disorder.  Or maybe it was a release of grief over all that I have lost to the nerve malfunction.  It was wonderful to her about my friends triathlons and her success.  She is really an elite athlete so I don't compete with her, but I was painfully aware of how much I missed training and competing.  As I sat and listened to her, I found myself repeating with my internal voice "you can still run, you can still swim, you can still run, you can still swim!"  This is true, but will I ever really compete again?  I may, I may not, but I trust for Him to strengthen me to live, for now, in the "GRAY"