Andrew's Wednesday night lecture.

 

Andrew's Wednesday

​Sometimes, you just have to listen to your body. Tuesday was a massive day for me—I got so much accomplished and pushed so hard—that when Wednesday morning rolled around, the tank was just empty. I didn't have the energy to get up and charge at the day, and you know what? That is completely okay.

​Instead, I saved my energy for something that turned out to be incredibly worth it. I sat down and listened to a lecture on the Book of Matthew, given by a brilliant professor from Northwest University over on the coastal side of Washington state. He was fantastic—had this great, engaging energy as a speaker, and he focused on the real heart of the text while avoiding all the unnecessary fluff that doesn't actually matter. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and I was so glad I conserved my strength so I could really focus and take it in.

​After he finished, I actually got a chance to speak with the professor and share a bit of my story. It felt good to connect with him, but talking about it also brought something heavy back to the surface for me.

​Months and months ago, I had a frustrating situation at my church. I was just standing there, waiting for the service to end so I could get to my seat, and I ended up having a conversation with a man there. I opened up and told him about my situation—about my stroke.

​And do you know what he did? He tried to just pray away my stroke.

​He didn't want to actually get to know me. He didn't want to take the time to appreciate my value as a person, or see who I am. He just wanted a quick fix. I had to stand up right then and say, “No, you can't pray that. You can't pray that I get miraculously healed from my stroke.” Now, look—I believe God could do that. But I also know God wouldn't, because that is not the path He has laid out for me. My stroke isn't something where you can just pray and—poof—I'm suddenly back to exactly who I was before, unless God deems it absolutely necessary for His glory.

​When I told the professor about this, he understood completely. He agreed with me that saying things like that is entirely the wrong approach. Because when someone prays for that kind of "poof" healing, they are basically saying they want you to be healed instead of being the person you have actually been.

​Since my first stroke in 2016, this journey has given me great suffering and monumental challenges every single day. But if someone were to mysteriously heal everything and throw me back into my old self, I wouldn't even know who I was. I have matured. I have grown. I have become a completely different person because I have had to live with and suffer through these strokes.

​That man at church didn't have the right to try and strip that away from me. This is my burden. Dealing with these hardships is exactly what is maturing me every single day. The professor knew that was true, but the man from months ago just couldn't grasp it.

​As I sat there reflecting on it, I thought about that man's own life. He has a daughter with autism. When he brings her to church, she goes out into the foyer, runs around, and claps her hands. It’s just what she has to do—it's her autism thing, and she can't help it.

​Now, I didn't say a word to him out loud. To actually say something would have been incredibly inappropriate and entirely unchristian of me, and I would never do that. But in my mind, I looked at his daughter and thought about how hypocritical he was being to want to "cure" me of something I didn't even ask to be cured of.

​Why wasn't he praying for his own daughter to be "normal" like other daughters? Because the crux of it is, she is normal. She has autism, but she is her. She is a beautiful preteen girl, and the fact that she is autistic isn't something to be cured—it is just how she is, and how she was born. He isn't out there praying over her to be healed of her autism, yet he turned around and tried to do it to me.

​We don't pray away the things that make us who we are, or the challenges that God uses to grow us into mature human beings.

​Wednesday was a quieter day, but it was a day of deep, necessary reflection.