Photo by Pablo Heimplatz on Unsplash

Read Time: 6 minutes

by AJ Canterbury

An end to suffering drives us. When we encounter pain, we immediately crane our necks in search of the fire escape. No one is (nor should be) a fan of physical suffering because personal suffering hurts and it’s uncomfortable and feels unnatural.

At least I trust that is a universal reaction to suffering, because it is the response to my own disability. Shouldn’t I expect a loving, all-powerful God to devise the fastest route to deliver me from my affliction? Two decades into my diagnosis, I’m still waiting for my healing.

Perhaps healing isn’t always God’s best design for us, as much as our hurting hearts demand that it should be. If healing isn’t on the horizon, does he still have a plan? And if there is a plan, can we consider it good or even best?

I think we can.

Searching for the formula to unlock healing.

When I was diagnosed with Friedreich’s Ataxia, I never thought it would hang around. I was convinced that after plaguing me for a bit, God would provide a way to remove it. The prognosis of the disease was mysterious and horrifying, offering more debilitation than a good God would allow. I just needed to muster enough endurance to suffer a bit and let the refinement set in.

By college, the disease I had been certain would vanish remained stubborn. Its progressive nature robbed me of my physical ability. I now depended upon a walker to navigate my apartment and a scooter to get around campus. My ability to write grew more laborious and cooking for myself took longer than the average person.

This Friedreich’s Ataxia had to go. Left to its design, this burden would grow too hard to shoulder for the rest of my life. Before things got worse, I needed God to provide a supernatural exit to shuttle me to safety.

I believed him able. He formed me in my mother’s womb, after all (Psalm 139). Such an involved creator would certainly experience no difficulty righting my chromosomes and eliminating the genetic defect within me. An impossible task for modern medicine, but I had taken the request right to the source, the one who could do something about it.

I had hoped for a cookie-cutter formula to break open heaven’s blessings, but it seemed a healing could not be manufactured.

I poured over the gospel accounts where Jesus traveled around Judea performing all kinds of healing miracles. I searched for how the person was granted their request for healing. There had to be a common denominator, a formula, of how to ensure that when I prayed for healing God would be bound to give it.

All the accounts of healings varied in their situations. Some of the people tracked Jesus down while others just seemed to be in the right place at the right time. There were also some who hadn’t even gone looking for Jesus; he had just sought them out. I had hoped for a cookie-cutter formula to break open heaven’s blessings, but it seemed a healing could not be manufactured.

I had attempted to manipulate God into serving me, as if God were a cosmic vending machine and I just needed to punch in the right code to unlock a healing.  Of course, I hadn’t intended to treat God that way.

I started to fear the healing would never happen. Even though the Lord of the Universe heard my cry and was able to do something about it, he had not.

What God is up to when he delays the healing?

What if God, fully aware of my condition and cry, chose to withhold physical healing, because my discomfort in the wheelchair was my best?

Despair and melancholy followed me through the latter half of my 20’s as I tried to accept God’s denial of my healing. My head knew that God was rich in mercy and goodness, but my bitter heart convinced me that God did not mean to extend that goodness to me. As my progression worsened, the disability grew more challenging to shoulder.

However, I remained committed to church and following God. Looking backward, I can see the glorious reassurance that God held my broken heart to his side during that time. I led a weekly men’s Bible study and we had just started studying the book of Acts. As I prepped for the coming lesson, God drew my eye to notice a small detail.

In Acts 3, Peter and John were going up to the temple in Jerusalem to pray, and they encountered a man who could not walk begging for money. Verse two describes how the man got to the gate: “And a man lame from birth was being carried, whom they laid daily at the gate of the temple…” The word daily demanded my attention.

The Gospels record that Jesus entered the temple of Jerusalem at least three times during his ministry. Had he passed over that lame beggar before without extending his healing touch? If so, how could Jesus have locked eyes with the man and not been moved with compassion?

Even if Jesus hadn’t entered by the same gate so that he never crossed paths with the lame beggar, the sovereign creator surely knew this man’s plight. Why not seek him out the way Jesus had with others? As I pondered these questions, I considered all the other suffering people during his time on earth who Jesus did not heal. Why were so many overlooked while others had been fully restored?

The rest of the lame beggar’s story in Acts 3 and 4 give shape to why his suffering had been previously “ignored.” Peter and John displayed that Jesus had granted them his authority when they met that lame man’s eyes and said “In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk” (Acts 3:6).  The crowd had seen that man begging at gate every day for years so when they saw him dancing around the apostles, they knew the message and work of Jesus was still active. 

Similarly, the man born blind in John 9 lived in his suffering “so that the works of God may be displayed” (vs. 3) when Jesus healed him. It wouldn’t have been best for either to be healed earlier; their healing came at the right time, fitting the perfect plan of the divine. God’s seemingly delayed intervention and their waiting in their suffering was the best.

I wondered if this could also be true of my situation. What if God, fully aware of my condition and cry, chose to withhold physical healing, because my discomfort in the wheelchair was my best? It was the instrument through which God’s perfect plan would be fully glorified.

What if the healing never comes?

Even our ongoing suffering can be best if its accomplishing (glorifying) his purposes.

Both the lame beggar in Acts 3 and the man born blind in John 9 carried their suffering for an extended period before they were dramatically and completely healed. Is that the way God’s perfect work, his best, is glorified: a long period of suffering followed by an observed earthly healing?

God’s best doesn’t always bring about a divine restoration from suffering. The Bible exemplifies that exact point when Paul prays to have his thorn in the flesh removed, and God says no because “’My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect through weakness’” (2 Cor 12:9). We don’t know specifically what Paul’s thorn in the flesh was, but we do know he was beaten, stoned, whipped, went without food, and shipwrecked (2 Corinthians 11:25-28). Paul’s body definitely bore the visible signs of the physical suffering he endured, and he went to the grave with them.

So even our ongoing suffering can be best if its accomplishing (glorifying) his purposes. Once again, the letter of 2 Corinthians offers comfort to the suffering Christian when Paul describes what our persistent pain is doing.  “So we do not lose heart. Though our outer body is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison…” (2 Cor 4:16-17).

Suffering is doing something. It is preparing something for the believer to be received in glory.  The affliction is getting them ready for heaven, a light and momentary affliction contrasting the eternal heaviness of what is coming. 

This a promise of things after the grave, meaning sometimes suffering marks an entire life. However, God’s best works amidst the affliction. In fact, the pain seems to be fueling the daily renewal.

So, I do not lose heart.

No matter how long I bear the affliction or if I am never healed this side of heaven, this suffering is accomplishing his great work.

There was a time when I believed only my complete healing from Friedreich’s Ataxia would glorify God. There’s no doubt that a healing would indeed glorify God, displaying his capable and sovereign control over his creation to all who witnessed it. It would be amazing.

But God’s best has me enduring this disability not removing it.

It hasn’t been the easiest truth to accept, but it has brought me profound comfort. No matter how long I bear the affliction or if I am never healed this side of heaven, this suffering is accomplishing his great work. My life is accomplishing a great work.

And should my condition worsen, and the days ahead get harder, his glory will continue to strengthen. None of my affliction has been meaningless.

The work he is doing through my suffering brings him glory, and the suffering prepares reward for me. It works for my good too. God doesn’t strain beneath the weight to make both happen.

I write this post when I, once again, long for healing, to be free of the disability. I don’t think it has ever really vanished. Sometimes the thought of the glorious day when God strips the Friedreich’s Ataxia from my body and I run unhindered entertains my imagination on repeat. I’m ready for it. My flesh wants so badly for my healing to be God’s plan too.

But I long for his best much more. If that best is letting his glory shine through me as I sit in my wheelchair, then that’s the path I’ll travel. That dark and lonely road is riddled with peril. It’ll force me to depend heavily on scripture for guidance and the prayers of my fellow saints that my faith should not faint along the way.

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