Something I don’t talk about as much as I would really like to is my faith. Growing up my parents allowed me to figure out for myself what I believed in, they didn’t want to push me towards a specific religion so they told me the basics of what they believed and then answered any questions I asked.
Most of my early exposure to religion was through school, my primary school had its own little prayer that we said in each assembly and we read child friendly versions of parts of the bible and some of the parables. We also had a visiting pastor from the local church who would tell us stories and explain parts of the bible in a really fun way and I really enjoyed those visits. While other children just thought the stories were fun and moved on, they spoke to me on a different level and many stuck with me throughout childhood. At that point I knew I believed in God and Jesus but I wasn’t really able to say much more than that, I couldn’t tell you if I identified as Christian, in fact many people who did identify as Christian told me that I didn’t fit in. I wasn’t baptised or christened, I didn’t go to church regularly and all sorts of other things that people told me I “had” to do. I did, however, believe that God was taking care of me, I believed that I could talk to him (although as a child my “talking” was pretty funny) and I believed that God could make real changes in my life.
When I was around 10 years old someone told me a story about a monster from a horror film. This monster scared me so much that every night before bed I would ask God to stop the monster from being real and ask him to protect me from it. I never called it praying, at the time I didn’t realise that praying doesn’t have to be perfect, but when I got a bit older I realised that my 10 year old self was indeed praying. While as an adult I know that the monster was never real, and that it would never have been able to get me, as a 10 year old that monster felt real, the fear whenever I thought of it was real, the panic when I first heard about the monster was real, and so was the comfort I felt when I asked God to take care of me each night. I now realise that although the danger was never actually there, the safety I felt in God, the protection I felt when I prayed was totally real, and that was my introduction to the peace of believing in Gods love.
As I got older, I began to question where I belonged. A lot of people made me feel like I wasn’t “allowed” to call myself christian because I didn’t do all the things that they did. This was especially prominent when I began to suffer with health problems. People would say that I must have been a bad child, that God was punishing me or my parents, that I wasn’t getting better because I wasn’t praying hard enough or because I didn’t believe it was possible etc. I felt like an outsider, I felt lost and alone. I still strongly believed in God and wanted to be able to express that, but I was being made to feel like I didn’t deserve it.
This impacted me so much that when my now fiancé (then best friend) asked me about religion I said I wasn’t a Christian. He was from a very Christian background and his parents had concerns about him being so close to a non-believer. During a later discussion, he mentioned me “not believing” and I was deeply offended. I strongly and forcefully corrected him – “I never said I don’t believe, I said I’m not a Christian because I’ve been told I can’t call myself that” .
That sparked a deeper conversation where I told him the things that I believe, I poured my heart out to him and at the end he turned to me and said “you ARE a Christian, those people who told you that you can’t be are wrong, they’re putting on a show but what makes you a Christian is what you believe inside and how you live your life, not just going to church or being baptised”. We have had many more conversations over the years and each time I feel more and more secure in calling myself a Christian, but more than that, I feel that my soul is being heard and that is amazing.
Something I have encountered many many times is people who can’t understand why I don’t want/ pray to be healed. They say I can’t really be a believer and not think I’ll be healed. Here’s the thing – I believe that one day I will be given a body that doesn’t hurt, that doesn’t make me sick, doesn’t make me cry, and that allows me to live without fear, but I believe that I am only promised that when I get to heaven. I believe that God has the power to choose to heal me now, but I believe that its not a promise, I believe that there is a reason I am sick. I believe that my life is more rewarding because of the experience of being sick. Having chronic illnesses is hard, having constant pain, sickness, exhaustion and fear is hard, but it is also beautiful. I believe that my illnesses have taught me compassion, empathy and patience, I have learnt to find happiness on the hardest days, I have had experiences that I previously would have been too scared to enjoy. I have learnt to see opportunities and seize them because I know I might not get another chance. I have felt serious fear but I have also experienced extreme peace. I don’t pray for my illnesses to be healed, I pray for the strength to face them.
There have been many times where I didn’t think I could cope any longer, long nights of severe pain where I have begged for relief, and although the pain never goes away, I have felt extreme comfort. I have felt the fear leave and my body relax, I have gone from feeling desperately alone to feeling loved and calm.
One of the most prime examples I can give is being changed from IV medication to injections. For around 5 years I had medication through IV infusions every 8 weeks. The medication did wonders for my crohns and improved my quality of life but my veins have never been good. I have always had small and weak veins that are hard to find and often “blow”. The longer I stayed on IVs the worse it got, I often had to endure 6-8 needle pokes before a working IV was established and then I had to be super careful or it would stop working. I often left the hospital covered in blood and bruises, my arms would hurt for days and the bruises would last for weeks. It was getting to the point where we were never sure if I would actually get my treatment because my veins were so damaged. It started getting to the point where I was having to force myself to go to each appointment. I never complained, I never expressed how hard it was, but internally it was getting harder and harder to walk through those hospital doors. The final push came when I attended an infusion appointment and we were seriously considering me having to come back a different day. We had one last attempt and got an IV in a really painful place on my wrist, and then I almost fainted. Coming out of that I was broken. I silently told God that I couldn’t keep this up any more, the mental stress of never knowing if I’d get my treatment, never knowing how many painful attempts they would need, how many bruises I would end up with was really starting to cause burn out. When the next appointment came, I silently begged for things to change, and it did. That was the day they told me I was going to be the first to change to self injection treatments. The relief of walking out of the hospital knowing that would be my last infusion made me feel like I was walking on air. Each time I inject it feels like a miracle. And that is how I experience my faith, I don’t wait around expecting God to fix me, but I walk through each storm and lean on God when it feels too much to do alone. I recognise the small miracles and I realise that even the smallest moments can create big changes. That’s how I maintain faith in the chaos.
Chronic musician 