Powerless

Powerless: that is how my RA makes me feel so much of the time. I can't make the pain go away, I am at the mercy of this disease and my crazed white blood cells circulating through my body. Yes the medicines and things helps, but when a flare happens there is always some amount of time that I sit, aware of the pain, longing for nothing more than it to leave and never come back. And that is about all the power I have in this..I don't get to dictate when things will hurt, or for how long, or to what degree they will make life more complicated. And it is really hard to feel so powerless.
Which gets me thinking, I don't really have power over other parts of my life, but I can easily deceive myself into believing that I do have that power. So this entire process has been a very humbling realization of my need for the Lord. Humbling and hard.
Our girls group continues to read through the book Waiting, by Ben Patterson. This book has been incredible and I highly recommend it. The chapter we read through for this week touched on the story of Abram, Sarai, and Hagar. Hagar was a servant of Abram and Sarai. In their long process of waiting for the Lord to fulfill his promise of a child for them, they got impatient and let Hagar in on the plan to carry the child they were maybe supposed to have. Well, that blew up in all their faces and in the process Hagar ran away but then heard the Lord calling her back into being Abram and Sarai's servant; back into facing the pain and struggle, probably ridicule or abuse or estrangement. In his calling, Hagar called the Lord "You are a God who sees me" (Genesis 16:13).
I know that the Lord sees my struggle, sees my pain, sees my powerlessness, sees and knows of my struggle more than I even know of. And in this, thankfully, I can find some comfort, and strength in knowing that in everything, I have someone who knows and sees and loves me who is in control.