When My Fellow Christians Tell Me, 'God Wants to Heal You'

I am a Christian myself and I believe in the power of the almighty God. But when a Christian tells me, “God wants to heal you,” I am confused. Because if God wanted to heal me, he could, right? He is God. So obviously, he doesn’t wish for that right now.

There were times when I was prayed over for healing, over and over again throughout the years to no avail. I was told that I didn’t have enough faith and that if I just mustered up enough faith to believe that God would heal me, he would.

I believe God empathizes with my pain and doesn’t enjoy seeing me suffer, but He knows what is best and knows all the ways my illness has made me more whole and has helped me learn about the good and beautiful in ways that I couldn’t if I wasn’t sick.

Saying that God wants to heal me tells me that God doesn’t value my illness. Always focusing on healing can make those with chronic illness feel that we aren’t good enough just the way we are, abilities and disabilities in all. Because of this, at times I have believed that I am not good enough with my illness. But I am enough and God believes that.

I see my struggle with pain as a grace that God has given me. I once had a professor who I opened up to about my illnesses. She quickly responded, “Wow. God must have one heck of a story out there for you.” She believed that because of my illness, I was given a special opportunity to see the world from a new perspective and that I would do powerful and important things because of my suffering.

It has taken time, but I believe her. I am more than my illness, but also my illness is a very important part of me — one that has shaped me and molded me into the person that I am. So please don’t discredit my life and my illness, because I am better for it. I believe the all-powerful-God doesn’t want to heal me and is choosing to allow this in my life. And although 10 percent of the time I am screaming at him for it, unable to understand why he could allow me to live with this pain, the other 90 percent of the time I get it — because I can’t imagine my life without my illness and without all that I have learned about myself and others from it.