The Long Haul

I’m fixated on the long-sufferers in the Bible, the bleeding woman, the crippled man who had to be carried to the pool, and the one who had to be let down through a roof by friends.

Now I don’t want to seem ungrateful or unfaithful, but there is something about not being able to breathe which shakes me to my core. When it’s a struggle, when each breathe feels like I am dipping down into an endless well and drawing up a single cup’s worth of barely drinkable water, I get panicky. 

Over the years I have learned how to control my asthma and not have full-on attacks, but all it takes is one misstep and off I go down into the oblivion of struggling to breathe. The last time I kicked off my asthma it was because I stupidly was Lysoling everything to death. They had announced that people with asthma were high risk for Covid, but not given any more information really. So I cleaned away my anxiety and inadvertently kicked off an asthmatic fit that lasted like three weeks.

Now I’m not trying to say asthma is a Job-like struggle or anything, but it can be exhausting.

This time it had been a month of coughing. A round of steroids and two rounds of inhalers/breathing treatment  later and I’m still coughing. And everything hurts. And I’m tired. 

So I try different things- the first tactic is ‘it could be worse,’ and my mind goes through a Rolodex of WebMD’s greatest hits. My favorite tends to be the rarest form of cancer that covers you in boils. OK, yeah, I need the Job study in my life right now, that much is clear. 

The next tactic is to compare. This is kind of ugly to be honest. I’m not exactly in a position to hear the good things going on in people’s lives as often as I hear the bad things. So sometimes a guilty pleasure is to store up the trials of others and tuck them away. I am so ashamed of this, and when I catch myself consciously doing it I repent and try to stop. 

The last thing I do, and admittedly it should be the first, is pray. Truly to pray about it and rest in whatever will happen will happen. To call out His promises over my breathing issues. Sometimes when I am more healthy or enlightened I’ll include worship in this time and I’ll literally worship through a trial. 

But.

I think it may just have to be genuine to be accomplishing any of His holy purposes.  I’m still just on my first pass of Job, of course I’ve read it a bunch before, for it sort of fits my personality anyway, but  this time is different already for reasons I’m not even sure of.

I’m sure octogenarians would think that a forty-something girl whining about how hard life is with asthma  is somewhat ‘cute,’  but what about the one who has been in pain these last eighty years? What would that do to a person to suffer that long? Probably my longest bout of suffering lasted around eighteen months. It felt like an eternity and it was such a short amount of time. A blink of the eye, really. 

What truly comes from long-suffering? Surely the deepest and purest faith? What if there is an opposite result that can happen? What, even, is the opposite of faith? Just simple unbelief? 

Sometimes I wonder if this was the whole point of the story of Job. If the devil was rolling the dice and hoping that poor Job came up snake eyes. (Hehe, get it, snake eyes?) But I am hoping that the importance of Free Will is a goal that God was aiming for. 

That He’s really, really rooting for the long-haulers. And I’m not entirely sure that they always will get the full reversal of their story that Job got, but, to remain faithful even still and even if He doesn’t heal you. That’s the goal. To endure until the end.