I’m a very backwards person, so it would make sense that while most people with asthma develop it as a kid and grow out of it as adults, I was fine my whole life then rapidly developed it at 21.
While I was still in the process of getting diagnosed, I wrote on my other blog about how this was my thorn in the flesh, how God actually used it to teach me some really important things about relying on him instead of myself.
Today I was reading about altitude sickness and how it affects your breathing(because three weeks from tomorrow we’ll be flying into the highest altitude airport in the world), and just as I started panicking, God reminded me of one of my happiest training camp memories.
Thursday night, we were all dancing before worship, and right when we transitioned from crazy dance party to singing the fun kind of worship songs that make everybody jump around, my lungs were just beginning to close up. A little voice in my head said, “If you don’t want to pass out, you have to either fight through the crowd and get to your inhaler in the next five minutes, or you have to sit down and stop singing.” But I didn’t want to do either. So I mentally yelled “I don’t CARE,” and started singing twice as loud. And the harder I sang the more I felt my lungs open themselves back up. The whole rest of the night I was fine; I even had a whole conversation while walking up a hill and didn’t wheeze one bit.
Friday night at Squad Wars I forgot my inhaler again, and this time it was all the way back at the campsite, so I once again told myself I didn’t care, and once again I was fine.
Obviously I went home thinking I didn’t have asthma anymore. God must have healed me. Yay, right?
Not really. The day after I got home, I ran up the stairs after bouncing through the kitchen telling my mom a long story, and was wheezing like a chain smoker by the time I got to my room.
Instead of whining to God for making me think he’d done a huge miracle, I smiled and thanked him for the small gifts he’d given me that week. I wanted to sing and dance without bothering to take my inhaler first, so he let me. I wanted to have fun at squad wars without worrying about breathing, so he let me. I wanted to talk to my squad leader for an hour without having to take a deep breath after every sentence, so he let me.
Maybe someday God will officially heal my lungs forever…but for now, I’m just happy that he keeps showing how much he loves me in little ways like this.
If he can keep me breathing so I can survive something as unimportant as a dance party with my squad, what makes me think he won’t do the same when I’m ministering in the mountains in Bolivia? He wouldn’t call me where he wasn’t going to take care of me.
And my God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus. ~Philippians 4:19
Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. ~2 Corinthians 12:9b
