Faith Through the Pain: Chronic Illness and Invisible Battles

welcome back to the Beauty and Burnt Toes podcast. Today, I want to talk about something that's really personal to me. what it looks like to walk with God while you're still hurting. I'm talking about all kinds of pain.

Whether that's physical, you have a chronic illness, you're going through something mentally challenging, you have emotional pain, anxiety, exhaustion, disappointment, grief, or those seasons where you keep praying for something to change and it hasn't yet.

I think we hear a lot of testimonies from the other side of the story. I was sick and then I got healed. I was struggling and God brought me through it. I was in a dark season and now I'm on the other side. And those testimonies are beautiful.

But I want to talk about a testimony that is still being written. What happens when you love God, you're praying, you're trying to trust him, and you wake up the next morning and it still hurts.

Because sometimes faith isn't standing on the other side saying, "Look what God did." Sometimes faith is standing right in the middle of it, saying, "God, I don't understand what you're doing, but I'm still here." I think that there's this idea that if we pray hard enough and really trust in God, we will be healed from our pain.

When You Think Enough Faith Should Mean Healing

Do you think there was ever a point where you feel guilty for being upset with God? We hear things like, "If you pray hard enough, it will be healed." you should have more faith. That's tough. Why should I struggle this much if I know God is good?

But when you actually read the Bible, you don't find people who never hurt. You find people who hurt deeply and brought that pain to God.

Psalm 34:18 says, "The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit." I love that this verse doesn't say that God is close to you after your heart isn't broken anymore. He says he's close to the brokenhearted right there.

So, what would you say to the Christian listening who feels guilty because they're angry with God right now? I would say I understand cuz I've been there.

And whether it's pain, anger, sadness, loneliness, or rage, you can still have a relationship with God even when you are struggling. So when you have a horrible day, you can still choose to love God.

And when you're upset with something that's going on, you can still choose to trust him. You can believe that God is good and still admit that what you're going through hurts or sucks. Um because I've been there plenty.

You can still have faith and be exhausted in your day-to-day or even emotionally exhausted. Pain is not proof that you've failed God. And struggling doesn't automatically mean your faith is weak. That's a really big one for me.

Sometimes one of the greatest acts of faith is simply continuing to turn towards God when everything inside of you wants to shut down. Um, and that kind of leads me into what I want to share about my chronic illness and how I've walked with God through it.

What Interstitial Cystitis Is, and How It Started

So, I have something called interstitial cyitis. It's a chronic bladder condition or known as a chronic pain condition that can cause bladder pain, pressure, urgency, frequency, and other symptoms that can interfere with my day-to-day quality of life.

For somebody listening who doesn't have IC or chronic pain, what does a genuinely hard day look like for you? So, I want to share my hardest day that I had IC. Um, which was actually the day I went to the ER for it.

So, I want to give brief backstory of how I got it before I was diagnosed.

Um, so I was in a relationship with a guy and me and his friend group, we all went to the beach and there was just a mixture of a bunch of things that affected me, you know, the beach water, sweating, um, just eating a bunch of like unhealthy food, drinking a lot of soda, things like that.

You know, I got back from the trip, I thought I had a UTI. I went to the doctor, they tested me, I was negative for any type of testing and I was still in so much pain and they didn't give me anything for it because I didn't show positive for any uh UTI bacteria.

So, they just told me to drink some cranberry juice and it would go away. And I continued to just have a lot of severe pain.

uh my body just felt like I had to go to the bathroom all the time and I felt extremely guilty for, you know, my actions on that trip and I felt like God was punishing me.

The Day I Went to the ER

And so, um, one morning I lived by myself in an apartment, um, in Atlanta and one morning I woke up with extreme like someone kicked me in the bladder and my bathroom was about 5t away and, you know, I couldn't even stand up and walk to the bathroom.

I crawled and was laying on the ground. I thankfully had my phone with me and I called my mom and told her I needed her to pick me up and take me to the emergency room and with our insurance and everything there was one about 30 minutes away.

So we went to that one and I went and I told them what was going on and they pretty much said it sounds like a UTI, you know, we'll give you a ultrasound down there and we'll do some more testing. You can pee in a cup, blah blah blah.

And so I did it after a six-hour day at the hospital. There was still no testing done. Thankfully, one of my friends in that friend group had interstatial cyitis and recommended me to her doctor.

But if she wasn't in that friend group, I probably wouldn't have ever figured it out or where to go. And so, I just want to specify this can come from anything. There is no ultimate reason you get it and there's no ultimate cure.

So, you can get this from just you can eat something. It can be stress. It can be trauma in the body. It's nothing transmitted. It is something that you get. It's not from anybody else. This is once you get it, does it normally stick with you? Yeah.

So, I think of it as it's a chronic UTI. Like, that's pretty much how it feels. It's it's different because people do have chronic UTI. Um, I don't have any bacteria or anything that would test me positive for a test. So, um, this isn't transmitted.

This is something I got and from my doctor when I first met with him and he diagnosed me. Um, he said a bunch of things that could probably start a UTI, but it surpassed it. That was the beginning.

And that day that I went to the ER was probably the hardest because that was after a month and a half, I'd say, of being in pain. And from there, I went another eight months undiagnosed without finding this doctor.

Nine Months of Advocating for a Diagnosis

I didn't talk with the girl that was my friend at the time about it more than just, hey, I'm having a a UTI. You know, it's different than I see. She gave me some of her medicine. It's called Urbel. And it was pretty much to help me be able to calm my bladder down.

And I took it and I was like, man, you know, this is really helping me. like where did you get this from?

and she told me the doctor and you know I went to go see him and he did a um cystoscopy on me where they put a camera in your bladder and they check and I had ulcers in my bladder and I was bleeding in my bladder and that's when he was like you do have interstial cyitis and I would say between the ER and the day I got diagnosed that was probably the hardest days of having this because I spent nine months messaging.

I'm not going to say the name of the uh medical insurance we had. Uh I was advocating over and over, sending text messages asking for medication, asking for more treatment, more appointments. No one cared. No one thought it was that severe.

Demetriosis was something that is actually now recently being recognized as something that's severe. Prior to that, it wasn't.

What Chronic Illness Takes From You

So, um, from being diagnosed and being undiagnosed, it it takes your body, I don't know, the the best way to put it is you lose what you used to have in your body. Uh, you'll never go back to your old self.

You'll no go you won't go back to being able to be healthy all the time, being able to run, being able to um do your normal activities. And I want to preface that having interstitial cyitis affects everyone that has it differently.

So the ways that I can be triggered to flare with citrus foods or tomatoes might not affect somebody else. Um you know coffee can be a flare or having high stress can be a flare for some people and that doesn't necessarily mean their flares is what's going to happen to me.

Uh it affects everybody differently. your body turns on itself kind of in a way that you've never asked for, you never wanted, and it will go against you.

Uh you can be trying to sleep, trying to go to school, trying to spend time with the people you love, enjoy time out of the house, try to eat, try to worship, but your body will always remember that something is hurting.

Uh there have been appointments, procedures, treatments, medications, questions, and moments of me questioning what's next and why. Eventually, physical exhaustion can become spiritual exhaustion.

How Long, Lord

Because when you've prayed for something repeatedly, um that question can start creeping in your mind. God, I know you can heal me right now if you wanted to. So why are you letting me live like this? And that is probably I mean, it's still sticks with me today.

That's still something that makes me teareyed. But I really struggled with my faith when I got it because I felt like I didn't need to live like this and I felt punished. And so I asked God, I prayed for him to help me or help me find a cure or something and it felt quiet.

And I think that was the hardest question to ask. The Bible doesn't clean up people's emotions before showing them to us. David loved God deeply. And yet, listen to what he says in Psalm 13. Psalm 13 1-2. How long, Lord, will you forget me forever?

How long will you hide your face from me? How long? Maybe that's one of the most relatable prayers when you're suffering. How long am I going to feel like this? How long am I going to hurt? How long am I going to struggle mentally? How many more flare-ups?

How many more nights am I going to cry about this? God, when are you going to rid me of this pain? David asking God, "How long?" wasn't the end of his faith. He was talking to God about his plan. And I think there's something important about that.

God already knows when we're frustrated. He already knows when we're confused, when we're angry. So instead of running away from him with those feelings, bring it to him. People think your prayers have to be nice, confident, and understanding when talking to God.

But sometimes faith sounds like, "God, I'm upset. I don't understand. I'm mad at you. I'm mad about this. I'm struggling, but I still want to talk to you." And that is enough. It's to still choose God.

Mental Health Is Not a Spiritual Failure

Something that doesn't get talked about enough is how connected physical and mental pain is. When your body constantly demands your attention, your mind gets tired and you become frustrated, anxious, discouraged, isolated, depressed.

Do you ever feel like people don't fully understand because you might look completely fine on the outside? You might see somebody doing something completely normal and think they don't even have to think about whether their body will let them do that today.

And that can be extremely dangerous. Proverbs 18:14, "The human spirit can endure in sickness, but a crushed spirit who can bear." God doesn't only care about what hurts physically. He cares about what your physical suffering is doing to your heart and your mind.

If you are struggling mentally, that doesn't make you less spiritual. You can pray and talk to somebody. You can trust God and go to therapy. You can have faith and also seek medical treatment.

You can believe God is God while also accepting the people and the resources that are helping you that God has placed uh in your life for a reason. There are Christian counselors because Christians can go to counseling, right?

Jesus Entered Into Suffering

Um one of the most comforting things that g uh about Jesus is that we don't worship a God who observed human suffering from a distance. He was in it. Jesus entered it. Isaiah 53:3 describes Jesus as a man of suffering with familiar pain. To me, that means Jesus knew grief.

He knew rejection. He knew betrayal. He knew exhaustion. He knew physical suffering. He knew emotional anguish.

In the garden of this gethmane in the garden of G say it in the garden of Gethsemane whatever Jesus says Matthew 26:38 my soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Jesus understands what it is to hurt. So when you're crying and praying God this hurts.

You're not explaining pain to someone who has never experienced suffering. You're talking to a savior who entered into human suffering himself.

Hebrews 4:15-16 uh scripture shares that we have a high priest who is able to empathize with our weakness and then tells us to approach God's throne of grace with confidence. That means your pain doesn't have to make you hide from God.

What Faith Looks Like on the Hard Days

Your pain can become the very thing that makes you run towards him. It makes you confident. It makes you strong and it can make you obedient. Pain can change what you're capable from on your dayto-day, hour by hour and minute to minute.

There might be days where you're productive when you're able to read scripture. You're praying. You're worshiping. You feel close to God and you feel good. And there are also other days where you're physically and mentally done and all you have is Jesus, help me.

Or Jesus, I'm struggling. I want somebody to understand what I'm saying. That is still prayer. That is still time with God. That is still a relationship with God. And there might be days where and there have been for me where my prayer to him is me being angry.

It's me yelling at him. I've had times where I've been, you know, with with I see I've held the the opportunity to lose my relationship with God and have dangled that in his faith in his face and said, "If you're not going to heal me, I'm done.

I'll go to something else that will help or will be a vice." Um, and I regret that, of course, and I didn't go that way. When you go from having you're young, I'm 22. I got this four years ago.

In the beginning, being an adult, um, when you go from having a healthy body, being an athlete, you know, I had everything. I had boxing. I thought I was going to go all the way with my boxing career. Um, I had all my friends and family in that.

And then when you get something that takes that away, um, it felt like Job. It felt like you lost everything that you cared about. And um you know I gained a lot of weight. I got depressed. Um I felt like God had abandoned me. I felt so unseen, so isolated, so misunderstood.

But some days all I had is if you're still there, hear my tears, hear my cry. And that is still a prayer. And even if you're mad at him, scream at him for all I care. people that say you can't you can't be mad at God. You can't question God. I don't believe that for a second.

Prayer When You Don't Have the Words

He'd rather have all of your worries, all of your questions than nothing. Yeah. Romans 8:26 says, "The Spirit helps us in our weakness." It even tells us that when we don't know what we ought to pray, the Spirit intercedes for us.

There are moments when you simply don't have the words anymore. And that's okay. God isn't standing over you saying, "Come back when you can pray better." He meets you in your weakness. And like I was saying, when I cry, I do believe he knows my tears and how I'm feeling.

My relationship with God doesn't have to be a performance and neither does yours. It doesn't have to feel like you have to earn his love for for pretending to be okay. You have to say you're fine so that your relationship with God can be stagnant.

Sometimes walking with God looks like reading five chapters of your Bible in one day with a bunch of adrenaline.

Or it looks like lying in bed whispering at night, "Jesus, please don't let me stray away from you even when I am mad or I'm in pain." If you could go back and talk to yourself when your journey with I first started, what would you tell yourself? God never left my side.

Shame, Blame, and the Mask I Wore

Uh even when I I thought he did. Um, I I grew a lot of shame when I first got it. I had a lot of resentment over the person I was with um because they were doing things drug-wise when I didn't know. And that could very well have been the cause of a big portion of why I got it.

That's what my doctor said. So I I was very angry with God. I was very angry in my relationship that I was in and I just felt a lot of pain and I kind of put on a mask for a while because I was like, you know what, it's my fault. You know, I chose to do all that.

Like I'm going to suffer. I'm going to suffer, but no one else has to be a part of that. And so I want to say that there's a difference with pretending to be okay and being honest.

My pain hurt and having an illness is hard and having mental suffering is also a struggle as well as losing somebody which I did often when that was going on. Um but we don't have to pretend. God can develop something in you in a season you would have never chosen for yourself.

And I really feel like that's what he's done with me. I feel like if I didn't have interstial cyitis, I don't think I would have still had my relationship with God. I was not going down a good path. Um I wasn't um repentant for what, you know, I was doing in my life.

I um still had a lot of sins that I was committing openly and didn't really care.

What the Illness Gave Back

And I feel like having this, I'm not saying he gave it to me, but being able to go to my knees to God because of my pain, I feel like I'm more close um with Jesus than I was prior because I get to actually have more of a heart and perspective of him going to the cross for me and the pain he endured when I have that reminder kind of every day that I'm in pain and he's the one that can put me through and like push me through that because he's also endured pain.

There is something that in in this season of having a chronic condition, I wouldn't have um experienced otherwise. I I feel like I have a deeper connection with God. I feel like I have more patience, especially with um my perspective of people.

I My mom's always told me never judge a book by its cover, and that can only go so far. But when you have something that's invisible, like I don't have I'm not handicapped in a sense of physically. Um, I'm still able to walk. Some people aren't. I am.

And so, people can't see my condition. Um, on the outside, it's an invisible condition. When I don't judge a book by its cover, I'm also not judging their heart or their mind because I don't know them.

Um, you can see me walking down uh the street going to the store or something and I'm in the worst pain of my life and you would never know. So my perspective on people has changed.

The way I speak to them, the way I talk to them has changed because I don't know what's going on even like chronically. And also my dependence on God has changed. I lean on him more now that I have this.

And honestly, I still struggle with being mad with him, but when I'm mad, that still makes me think of him. So I'm never getting away from him. Um, and I I have a sensitive heart for people who struggle um with what I'm going through or anything involving chronic pain.

Choosing to Talk About It

Um, my testimony I feel has been able to reach people. Um, I post on Tik Tok a lot about uh struggle and trauma and suffering. And recently, I've posted my interstitial cyitis just update of I was gonna get a surgery, yada yada yada. And I felt like I wanted to post that.

And mind you, I never wanted to talk about this in public. I never wanted to talk about how I got it. I felt so much shame and so much guilt about why I got this and people thinking, oh, like she's a leper in a sense, like she can't be touched. She's got stuff going on. Gross.

And I'm finally able to talk about it. and I finally feel free of that chain. And so I think that this is beautiful to talk about because it is reaching people that are going through stuff that don't talk about it either.

So isn't this what the beauty and burnt toast is all about? Sometimes life gets burned. Sometimes the things sitting in front of you looks nothing like what you thought God was going to give you. But I do want to say this.

Um, I feel like when we talk about topics like this, there's going to be some people that are going to say, "You shouldn't talk about this." And I know you probably thought that, too, at a certain point. Yeah.

I mean, freedom lies in honesty, in telling people where you came from, even though it's rough, even though it's ugly. Like, how are we going to learn? That's what testimonies are all about. Hey, I did this. It wasn't right, but look where I am now.

And I'm stronger and I've learned from it. Yeah. And I'm going to be vulnerable vulnerable enough to talk about it so that other people can learn, too. Yeah. I have no I have no hiding what I've gone through and what I've done cuz I don't do it anymore. I had a party phase.

That was during my party phase. That was during some really bad mental moments. Was drinking a lot. I again I was in a relationship that wasn't biblically aligned. It was not equally yolked. I I was not married.

And so I'm not proud of it, but if I didn't go through that, I wouldn't be where I'm at now. And I learned from it. So I have no shame in hiding that. Uh cuz Jesus was able to be there for me and heal me of who I used to be because I went through that.

Waiting for Your After

um what you think God is going to give to you or like what I experienced with having this kind of laid on my life. It didn't look tasty. If we're talking about burnt toast, didn't look tasty. Didn't look digestible. It didn't look enjoyable.

Um but sometimes it's looking at the toast in your life and thinking, God, what do you want me to do with this? And somehow God is able to take the parts of our stories we would have thrown away and create something beautiful through them.

Not because the pain itself was beautiful, but because he was present in it. Maybe you're listening to this and you're waiting for your after. I was for a while.

you know, maybe my my my life, my testimony, my purpose will start after the diagnosis because then I'll know I'll know what it is that I'm struggling with. I'll have a cure somehow and I'll be able to move on.

Maybe it's after the medicine when you start to feel better, you're not in any pain, you feel like you can take on the day better, then you'll know your purpose. Maybe it's after the anxiety attack or the depression or the grief of losing a loved one.

Maybe it's after the heartbreak or an unanswered prayer. Maybe it's after the healing. And maybe you've thought, "Once God gets me out of this, then I'll have my testimony." But what if your testimony has already started? Maybe today's testimony isn't God healed me.

Maybe it's more I'm still here. I'm still praying. I'm still choosing him. I'm still believing. I'm still getting up. and I'm still choosing to walk with God even though I don't understand what's happening. 2 Corinthians 4:8-9. We are hardpressed on every side but not crushed.

Perplexed but not in despair. Persecuted but not abandoned. Struck down but not destroyed. Maybe you're still in the middle and that's okay. Me, too. God writes stories in the middle as well. Your testimony doesn't begin the day the pain ends.

It can begin with discovering who was there while it hurt. If you're listening to this today and you're hurting physically, mentally, emotionally, or spiritually, I want you to know you don't have to fake it with God. You don't have to pretend with people.

You don't have to put on a mask. You don't have to clean yourself up before going into his presence. You don't have to understand why it's happening. You can simply come to him and say, "I'm hurting, but I'm here." And I have continued to do that.

Still in Pain, Still Present

I'm called to pick up my cross daily, and that's how I do it. Sometimes it's in pain.

It's not knowing what the future holds, how it's going to affect uh affect being a mom in the future, having children, even now graduating college, being able to maintain my flare-ups on a dayto-day. I'm getting a device actually next Tuesday, put in my back.

I did the testing this past week. Um, this is supposed to help me in my symptoms, but one thing the doctor said is this is going to help your frequency to, you know, go to the bathroom, but your pain might not ever go away.

And initially hearing that, you know, it made me think, well, why should I even do this? Like, what's the point? I'm still going to be in pain. But then I thought to myself, maybe that's the point.

Maybe the point is that I'm going to stay in pain, but I'm still still present with God. I'm still choosing to walk by his side. My pain, I think, has a purpose. And I don't know why, and I don't have all the answers. And my story is not finished.

But I'm learning that my relationship with God cannot only exist in the moments when my prayers are answered. I have no pain. I have to know him here, too. in the questions, in the surgery, in the good days, in the painful flare-up days, in it all.

Because sometimes the testimony isn't that the pain disappeared. Sometimes the testimony is that the pain didn't leave, but neither did God. Thank you guys for listening to another episode of the beauty in burnt toast.

Whatever your burnt toast moment looks like right now, don't assume God has thrown the story away. There may still be beauty being created in a place you can't see yet. We'll see you guys next time. Bye bye.

A Prayer for Anyone Still Hurting

Dear God, I pray for every person listening who is struggling physically, mentally, or emotionally. You know their pain, even the parts nobody else sees. God, we ask you bold boldly for healing and relief. But while we're waiting, give us the strength to keep walking with you.

Remind us that our pain doesn't mean you've abandoned us. And our questions don't mean that we've lost our faith. For the person who is exhausted from the fight that they battle every day over and over, meet them exactly where they are today.

Lord, give them peace, strength, and the reassurance that their life still has purpose even here. Help us trust you with the parts of our stories we don't understand. Whether we're celebrating healing or we're waiting for it, remind us that you are near.

The pain may still be here, but so are you. We love you and we trust you in Jesus name. Amen. Before you go, if this episode spoke to you in any way, would you do us a favor? Share it with a friend who might need it, too. You never know who's walking through something quietly.

And don't forget to follow, like, and subscribe so you don't miss what's coming next because we've got more real conversations, more honest moments, and probably a few more burnt toe stories along the way.

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We'll see you next time.