Grateful

Today is Thanksgiving.  It means a lot of different things to a lot of different people.  This year I feel incredibly blessed just to have been able to be at home with my family to spend the day with them.  I just got out of the hospital, again, on Monday.
This day is a day every year where people list what they are thankful for. Who they are grateful for and list the wonderful things that have happened to them.
My list this year is a little bit different than in years past for me.
I am grateful for my illness.  As I sit here and write this, I am surviving Type 1 diabetes, a double organ transplant, infections from a compromised immune system,  surgery after surgery, procedure after procedure and I know for sure that in this lifetime my body will need to go through so much more before it finally rests.  I'm in pain right now.
I see this illness as something to be grateful for because God doesn't give me more than I can handle and he has always given me the strength to handle whatever comes my way for the last 40 years.  I also think that in this life God gives us a choice on how to deal with the struggles of this life.
Many times I have relied on myself and I was strong enough at the time to get through, God built me strong to begin with.  But now, I rely on God and his wisdom. Now I don't know how else to make it through.
I don't know why these things happen to me.  I don't know what else is to come.  But I do know that I will survive in the arms and the love of my God.
My illness has humbled me.  It has filled me with love.  It has grown my compassion.  It has allowed me to be hurt over and over again by my own sin and other's sin and still keep going.
It has made me so incredibly weak so that God's amazing strength can be seen.
Person after person has said to me how do you do it?  How can you possibly see this as a postive thing?  How do you smile and laugh and continue the joy that you have in your life when you are going through so much?  When you may have to face worse?
That answer is easy. It glorifies God every time I say that it's not me healing myself over and over.  It's not me that has the strength to face whatever comes.  It's not me that smiles at the nurses and doctors every time there is bad news, even if through tears.
It is God.  It is Christ.  It is the Holy Spirit that resides inside me that laughs, that makes jokes about my illness, that continues to face the world with joy.  Through me and every person that God touches with the Holy Spirit there is a strength, a love, a beautiful thing that happens where God takes tragic circumstances and pours love into them.
A woman at the hospital this time came to talk to me before they discharged me and told me that sick as I was I had a smile on my face and a light in my eyes.  I told her it was God.
She looked me straight in the face and told me that she knew that just by talking to me.
That is why this illness is something that I am grateful for.  It allows God to shine, even if people don't realize that it's him, it gives me the opportunity to tell them what he has done for me and keeps doing for me.
And because I will not be here forever, there is an urgency to me talking to people about God that I just wouldn't have if I didn't know that my time here is not guaranteed and could be taken at any moment.
I have freedom to love my God openly and unashamed without worrying about what others will think because of this illness.
And I praise God for that freedom and all the other freedoms that he has given to me.  I praise him for this illness.  Thank you God for allowing my weakness so that I can see my need for you and rejoice in it.

K