Patience in Affliction

Living Broken Again BLOG By Susan Vaughan Shumake

January 2, 2015 / April 28, 2020 / April 6, 2023

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“Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer.”
Romans 12:12

I look up and I see the wooden blocks on my mantle that say 6 weeks. Instead of bringing me relief they make me weary of my course. 22 weeks is what they say. 22 weeks of chemotherapy. Everything is so connected to time now. The word “journey” itself brings with it a sense of a trek, a set time to be traveling- to be away.

The length of the journey is the most difficult. Knowing that only the passing of days will bring me to the end of it. The waiting feels endless. Enduring. Where is my patience in my suffering? Romans 12:12 says, “Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer.” To live this scripture, I have to begin at its’ end. If I am faithful in prayer, then I will have the God given ability to be patient in affliction, and only out of that rest, can I hold onto a sense of hope. When I rest in that hope, joy comes.

I have always found it hard to stand still. Accomplishment has meant always moving forward towards some kind of goal. As long as I was moving forward, even the slightest amount, meant growth, progress, success, even as I sought to fulfill the purposes of God. So to be at a standstill with my life, my hopes, and my dreams because of a disease is a continuous struggle. Because of Traumatic Brain Injury. Because of Coronavirus. Because of a Broken Femur.

I have been forced to “rest” from my striving, which I believe is exactly where God wants me. Yet I still struggle to find purpose in my days. If I have breath, and this day is a gift, then shouldn’t I be “doing” something? I am Recovering Beauty.

So I press in to God. I read devotional after devotional, and search the scriptures to find verses to hold onto to give me hope. I need hope to “stand” and rise above my circumstances. I remember where God has delivered me in the past and I know that He loves me. And yet, my battle against cancer, against a Traumatic Brain Injury, against Coronavirus, against the pain in my broken Femur, my battle against an Invisible enemy, never leaves my mind, and I must rest where I am, and fight the battle.