I knew it was bad when I couldn’t push the stroller around the neighborhood, feeling like my muscles were about to give out, and I had to stop and catch my breath. Trying to convince a four-year-old boy that we should take a break, I said, “Would you like to sit down and have a snack?” The basketball hoop in the cul-de-sac hadn’t kept him entertained for long, so I thought food might do the trick, and it would give me a chance to rest.
After finishing my nanny job early that afternoon, I decided I’d leisurely shop for an hour or two since one of my favorite shopping centers was located nearby. I remember walking the length of the busy parking lot, getting back into my car, and taking a long, exhausted breath. “There’s something wrong with me,” I thought. It felt similar to the time I had mono a few years ago, my body functioning enough to get me around, but barely. “I need to sit for awhile,” I told myself with a deep exhale. I was more than tired; I was fatigued.
Insuranceless, I waited a few more weeks before going to the doctor, though an unrelated symptom actually drove me there. By the third visit, my doctor decided to run a blood test. She called me the next day. I heard the gentle concern in her voice as her words slowed to affirm what I’d suspected. “You’re very anemic,” she said. She prescribed iron pills three times a day for the next thirty days. I started on them that very evening, and by the sixth day of taking the supplements, I noticed a marked improvement in both my energy level and breathing habits. By the end of week two, I felt mostly myself again. I couldn’t believe how terrible I’d felt— how bad I had allowed it to get, and for so long— once I started to recover. It took three months on the supplements for my iron stores to be replenished.
The thing about iron deficiency is that it happens gradually over many months. Looking back, I see the signs as they began to approach a dangerous level. I’d tire easily while ballroom dancing, and I’d often end the night of a social dance early or refrain from even going out. One day, just weeks prior to my diagnosis, I was practicing the waltz with a co-worker, having a hard time keeping up with him, and feeling at one point like I was about to black out. Fully conscious, but seeing stars, I expressed that I needed to take a short break. My blood, lacking the number of red cells needed to carry oxygen throughout my body, couldn’t carry enough oxygen to my muscles and brain. I didn’t tell him what I was feeling. Instead, I brushed it off as just being out of shape. And so it went, coming up with reasons why things were not the norm— I presumed it was this, or that, or some degree of anxiety. I even credited my pale gums as healthy gums and good dental hygiene. All the while, the truth was that going up a flight of stairs left me winded and dizzy, and I occasionally felt like my heart was about to irregularly beat right out of my chest.
The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines deficiency two ways, the most obvious in this case would be “a shortage of substances necessary for health.” The second definition expounds deficiency as “the quality or state of being defective or of lacking some necessary quality or element: inadequacy.”
Gosh, am I familiar with that word— inadequacy— with all the worry of “not enough” headlining my internal dialogue, with all of the anxious feelings and the fight it can take for self-worth and abundant living. This mental or emotional state of scarcity obstructs my ability to see what’s already there or what’s possible up ahead. I forget the truth, I forget gratitude, and I forget restoration.
2017 was a difficult year, not only because of my case of anemia, but also because I experienced two car accidents and spent 10 months searching for a permanent place to live. I’m thankful now to have gotten through it all with the love of my family and the generosity of a good friend, who allowed me temporary space in her spare bedroom. We really do need each other, you know. Still, it was a confusing place to be. I needed to fight off the fear-filled not-enoughness of my external world and trust that God was, and could supply, my every need.
In July, in the middle of it all (though I did not yet have a diagnosis), I bought a new journal, and in the first entry I copied a passage from Psalm 107:
He turned the desert into pools of water and the parched ground into flowing springs;
There he brought the hungry to live, and they founded a city where they could settle.
They sowed fields and planted vineyards that yielded a fruitful harvest;
He blessed them and their numbers greatly increased, and he did not let their herds diminish. Then their numbers decreased, and they were humbled by oppression, calamity, and sorrow…
But he lifted the needy out of their affliction and increased their families like flocks.
The upright see and rejoice, but all the wicked shut their mouths.
Whoever is wise, let him heed these things and consider the great love of the Lord.
Psalm 107:35-43 NIV
I then listed my complaints to God, and I listed His replies.
But God, I don’t have my own place anymore.
You are safe. You have a healthy place. You have a friend there at the end of each day. See my increase.
But God, I just got this new car and it’s already wrecked.
You have a reliable car, not at risk of breaking down. You may have this car for years to come. See my increase.
But God, I still don’t have a husband.
You have more of me. I have more of your heart and you have more of mine.
See my increase.
I believe wholeheartedly in restoration and abundance. I lived it in 2016. Last week, I listened to an interview with songwriter Ashley Cleveland on the Typology Podcast, and she said, “Those who are capable of honesty will recover.” Sometimes we get ourselves into a mess or those old clichés happen— life throws you curveballs and you get the rug pulled out from under you. But when we, or they, do, honest living increases your resilience. What I mean is this: My blood cells would’ve never been restored if I’d continued denying my symptoms. A heart will never heal while denying the pain. Your thinking will never be clear until you tell the truth. And prayer. Lots of prayer is necessary. Don’t be afraid to be honest with a faithful God. Pour out your heart to him. You may even get a glimpse of things from his perspective, from the One who is able to do immeasurably more than we can ask, think or imagine. HE is abundant.
After all of the beautiful things that happened inside my heart in 2016, a few storms blew into 2017 that made it easy to forget. Meditating on Psalm 107, as well as some wise guidance of a friend, I penned these words into my journal:
There are seasons of abundance and there are seasons of lack, and God is good and faithful in all of them. If I look closely, I can see increases in ways that aren’t always the obvious blessing.
Resilience is a muscle we need and a gift to the human spirit. Try as we might, though, we just can’t restore it all in our own strength. We need someone to point the way like my doctor, offer a hand like my friend, or even carry the entire burden. Jesus has done this for me time and time again.
“Trust in him at all times, o people; pour out your heart before him; God is a refuge for us. Selah.” Psalm 62:8 ESV
I’d like to leave you with an exposition on this Psalm from The Treasury of David by Charles Spurgeon:
“Trust in him at all times. Faith is an abiding duty, a perpetual privilege. We should trust when we can see, as well as when we are utterly in the dark. Adversity is a fit season for faith; but prosperity is not less so. God at all times deserves our confidence. We at all times need to place our confidence in him. A day without trust in God is a day of wrath, even if it be a day of mirth. Lean ever, ye saints, on him, on whom the world leans.
Ye people, pour out your heart before him. Ye to whom his love is revealed, reveal yourselves to him. His heart is set on you, lay bare your hearts to him. Turn the vessel of your soul upside down in his secret presence, and let your inmost thoughts, desires, sorrows, and sins be poured out like water. Hide nothing from him, for you can hide nothing. To the Lord unburden your soul; let him be your only father confessor, for he only can absolve you when he has heard your confession. To keep our griefs to ourselves is to hoard up wretchedness. The stream will swell and rage if you dam it up: give it a clear course, and it leaps along and creates no alarm. Sympathy we need, and if we unload our hearts at Jesus' feet, we shall obtain a sympathy as practical as it is sincere, as consolatory as it is ennobling. The writer in the Westminster Assembly's Annotations well observes that it is the tendency of our wicked nature to bite on the bridle, and hide our grief in sullenness; but the gracious soul will overcome this propensity, and utter its sorrow before the Lord.
God is a refuge for us. Whatever he may be to others, his own people have a peculiar heritage in him; for us he is undoubtedly a refuge: here then is the best of reasons for resorting to him whenever sorrows weigh upon our bosoms. Prayer is peculiarly the duty of those to whom the Lord has specially revealed himself as their defence.
SELAH. Precious pause! Timely silence! Sheep may well lie down when such pasture is before them.”
Photo by Ben White on Unsplash
