The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure.
Who can understand it?
Jeremiah 17:9
I don’t usually lead off my blog with thoughts related to my treatments or physical situation — I’m way too private for all of that. However, a conversation was had this week and I knew immediately that it should be the subject of my writing. Here is how it happened…
The chemotherapy I’ve had this summer has left me with some annoying neuropathy in my hands and feet. Often, as we crawl into bed at night, I apologize to my husband for my cold feet. The other night I even asked him if he would warm them up from their frost-bitten state. He grabbed ahold of my feet and smiled and said, “Honey your feet are just as warm as the rest of your body. Your nerves are sending you wrong signals — you just can’t trust them right now.” My mouth said something like, “No, my toes are falling off, you need to hold them!” But, my mind knew he was completely right and far more than just about nerves in my feet.
We receive so many signals every day — some can be trusted, but many cannot. We send and receive signals in our relationships daily, and often misinterpret those signals. If our spouse is silent, we may take it personally. If a co-worker is more direct than usual, we wonder what we did wrong rather than wonder what might have frustrated their day. These mixed-up signals cause us all kinds of problems.
But there are other relational signals in life that carry a bigger threat. Those are the signals related to how we interact with and understand the heart of God. We can easily misinterpret our circumstances to be an indicator of God’s love for us — this gets us into big trouble and can severely damage our faith.
The nation of Israel completely mis-read their circumstances as they were traveling through the Wilderness on their way to the land God promised them. Moses recounted this in Deuteronomy:
You grumbled in your tents and said, “The LORD hates us; so he brought us out of Egypt to deliver us into the hands of the Amorites to destroy us.” (Deut. 1:27)
Isn’t that just what we do? We find ourselves in a challenging circumstance and mis-read the whole episode! We think perhaps God is punishing us — or brought this into our lives because He’s disappointed in us. Or we convince ourselves that God has given up on us and has lost interest in protecting us.
That is exactly how Israel read their situation — but, just like my own assessment of my toes — they were 100% wrong. Here is a passage later in Deuteronomy that expresses the reality of what was going on:
Because he loved your forefathers and chose their descendants after them, he brought you out of Egypt by his Presence and his great strength, to drive out before you nations greater and stronger than you and to bring you into their land to give it to you for your inheritance, as it is today. (Deut. 4:37-38)
Do you see the reality in those two passages? Israel interpreted as hate what God was doing out of love. Those are two opposites just like the cold and hot in my toes!
Back to that bed-time conversation — if I had simply checked out the reality of the situation by touching my feet rather than relying on how they felt, I would have known the truth. I would have been able to say, “those slippery nerves are lying to me again tonight!” And the same is true for our uncomfortable circumstances in life. If we would just check out the reality of the situation by consuming a steady diet of the Bible (God’s love letter to us), rather than relying on how we feel, we would know the truth. The truth is that crummy circumstances happen to everyone, but God said He would never leave us or forsake us. Knowing the truth empowers us to press through a great many circumstances in life.
As a personal update, neuropathy aside, I have made a lot of progress this week and think I could label myself at about 95% of the former me in terms of energy, thinking ability, ambition, etc. I just have to be careful how I use my fingers (which means not really use them) because of the delicacy of my nails. This will resolve itself with time and it’s a fairly small price to pay for the effective job that the chemo did for me. I’ll share more about that next week.
My Love & Blessings,
Sue