the journal

I’ve been thinking about faith a lot lately. I’ve had some really weird, non-life threatening health problems since I was 12. They are all auto-immune related and it seems like they’ll never completely go away. I was diagnosed with IBS a couple years ago and it seems like nothing I do makes it better. I’ve changed my diet 3 times, tried to be less stressed and nothing is making a difference. And I’ve been really frustrated and defeated. I haven’t felt good and I’m tired all the time. So, my sister and I decided to start this Plan. It’s not really a diet, but more of a lifestyle change. You cut out a bunch of foods and then start adding in one at a time to see if your body reacts to it. And I have struggled! It requires a lot of prep and a lot of cooking and I do not love either one of those things. So, it’s been hard, to say the least. And it’s frustrating. It’s frustrating to finally think that something is going to work and it doesn’t. And I’m sure I could do better, but I’ve been getting discouraged.

And then this week I was reading in the scriptures in Mark chapter 5. And there is a story about a woman that had an issue of blood her whole life and she knew and had faith that if she could just touch the Savior’s clothes that she would be healed. And she was. She touched his clothes and her health problems went away immediately. Now…I’m not saying that it works like this for everyone. Sometimes our problems aren’t solved right away. And sometimes there’s something else we need to learn from what we’re going through. And maybe that’s the case with me. Maybe I’m supposed to learn to enjoy cooking! ..bleh. Or maybe I’m supposed to learn patience or maybe I’m supposed to learn to trust God and have faith in him.

And I know it sounds crazy, but I think I’ve just been caught up being so frustrated that I even have to deal with this problem and trial that I haven’t even realized that if I do something about it and if I have faith that everything I’m trying could actually work, then maybe it will work. Instead of just being frustrated that I can’t eat whatever I want and that other people don’t have to do anything special to take care of their bodies, I need to have faith and remember that God is in control and that when I have faith in his power, I will be healed. One day I won’t have to deal with being tired or feeling sick all the time. But in the meantime, I need to do everything I can to become better. To become stronger. I need to have faith that I can be healed, that this won’t last forever and that I’m probably gonna have to try several things before anything makes a difference. And that’s okay.