Waiting Rooms

            The last place you would think of finding the goodness of God is a doctor’s office—a diagnosis laying still between the two ends of a manila folder. Sitting there, staring at a diagram of the human body, the least likely to make friends are illness and faith, so you cling to it, and hope that in the meantime, illness won’t befriend you. But faith—faith is the anchor you hold onto, unshakable and unwavering. On Sunday mornings when a fellow church member chimes in with a: “God is good, all the time,” you respond with: “and all the time, God is good.” It is true and it is your strongest standing anchor, all until you are faced with moments where you question the goodness of God.

            My menstrual cycle began for first time at 17, and after that, I only caught a mere glimpse of it about once a year. “You’re so lucky! You don’t have to worry about getting your period,” I’m told—a fine line between agreement and worry filling my laugh in return. But it’s different when you’re 21, and it still doesn’t come often, because then, you match descriptions on the web for someone showing signs of early onset infertility, PCOS, and an even longer list of things that make you question where it all went wrong.

            I don’t have PCOS, I would tell myself over and over again, followed by the quiet declaration, but a declaration nonetheless: and by His stripes I am healed, Isaiah 53:5. After noticing a steady weight gain of about 30 pounds, even when my eating and exercise habits were improving, I finally decided to make a doctor’s appointment. I was going to prove to my doubt that God’s goodness had not run out on me, and in fact, would be a sign to doctors that I was more than another diagnosis to be laid to rest on their clipboards and filing cabinets.

            Two weeks until I was set to go on a mission trip to Uganda, I sat on the table as they took an x-ray, confident and calm that everything would turn out all right. The colors blue and red never looked so pretty as when they meshed on the LED screen before my eyes. Pretty, vibrant, and a sight to see until the doctor said: “just like we suspected, we found some cysts in your ovaries. This is what is called Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome. Down the line should you want to conceive, this may not affect you looking at the size of your cysts, but should you have trouble, there are a lot of alternative options.”

            Although the doctors never specified if my PCOS was affecting my fertility, the fear was still there. One of my greatest desires is to have children. It’s that simple. I sit in classrooms, grocery stores, coffee shops, and the altar of my local church dreaming of the day I get married and have children. Just the thought that one of my biggest dreams is held at the hands of an illness is terrifying. I don’t want the day to come when I’m in my thirties, walking through a grocery store or coffee shop again, and find myself longing to hold the baby that’s crying three aisles away as my own, knowing that it might not happen. But there’s one thing I’ve come to known when facing impossibilities in my life: God wouldn’t be quite supernatural if I was able to do things in my own natural ability.

            When my mother was pregnant with me, doctors advised her to abort me up until the late term of her pregnancy. They said I would be born with deficiencies and abnormalities—the scans clear, and the many diagnoses supported the reality that my mother was never supposed to get pregnant in the first place. She had hyperthyroidism and was told that she wouldn’t be able to have children, but the fact that I was born with zero abnormalities tells me that holding onto a faith that believes God can do crazy miracles may make me look like a fool—but it’s something worth holding onto.

            So, it’s in looking back that I see God in every single detail—each one a place I thought He was absent. He was there when I was five, fell off my bike, and didn’t want to try to ride again. He was there when I was eight, sitting in a doctor’s office yet again, being told I had a tumor in my head—misdiagnosis, miracle, who knows, but a year later the exams came back clear. And He was there at 21, reassuring me that if He’s shown me countless miracles once, then countless miracles He’ll show me again.

            But disappointment is a part of getting to know God. All I had experienced up to this point was the goodness of God. He saved me from my struggle with suicidal thoughts and depression at the age of 11, and I became completely enamored with the heart of a God who was nothing but good to me. Sitting in my car, feeling like I was hit with a ton-load of disappointment, I couldn’t stop crying. Did I do something to bring this upon myself? Was I cursed—did God want me sick to teach me a lesson? Why did God allow illness to enter in the first place if I had faith? If I didn’t have an ounce of faith when His love first found me, then wasn’t it enough in this moment, sitting outside a doctor’s office wondering if I’d ever be able to have kids one day?

            Nonetheless, I kept declaring God’s goodness. I sang songs. I prayed. I did all the things a good Christian girl should do, completely numb to what was actually going on inside my mind. Shame was at work, and shame was telling me: if you truly believed in the goodness of God, you would not be disappointed.

            One night, I decided to watch a sermon by Melissa Helser. She talked about her experience in getting a bone disease and was given one year to live. She was miraculously healed, and a few years later, the disease came back. By the time she said: “being disappointed isn’t the problem, staying disappointed is,” I was completely lost in the sound of my loud heaving. I had somehow become convinced that grief and lament were not something God would be proud of, completely forgetting that Jesus Himself did this; He grieved. She described a moment when she sat at her piano and felt like Jesus Himself kneeled down beside her, and told her He was proud of her for grieving, and kindly told her it was time to leave the place of disappointment she had buried herself in so deeply. I took hold of that moment too, and felt a kind, kind God come down, to show me His goodness does not change, even in the midst of my circumstances.

            You begin to question God’s goodness when you don’t know Him as a Father. I had to dig through the layers of disappointment, shame, and doubt looming above my head to reach for a truth that told me that God’s plan for me is not illness, and that He too, kneels down with those who cry, all to show them that His goodness is not something that runs out.

            The following summer, I went to Brazil on a mission’s trip. At one of the churches, a young lady about my age came up to me and asked for prayer. She told me she also had PCOS, but by the time I was done praying for her, she told me that while I was praying for her, she felt a strong warmth in the area near her ovaries. Coincidence, miraculous healing, whatever you want to call it, but by the time I was done praying for her, I was filled with joy for her. In the two weeks our team spent in Brazil, we saw over 1,000 healings, from blind eyes, to deaf ears, so it was easy for me to believe that whether she walked away healed or not, healing comes in many different forms, times, and however God wants to have it—but nonetheless, I had faith not only for her, but for me too. I felt her pain like I felt her joy, and walking away believing for her miracle, I held tight to the promise that one day I would be healed too, because if He’s done it once, He can do it again.