Yesterday (at this time of this writing), a post of mine was published on a blog I hadn’t been on before. And the comments made me both smile and made my heart break. I had struggled to write that post and had prayed that God would use it. Well, it is turning out that He is. But not in the way I imagined. People weren’t responding to any profound spiritual truth or encouragement that I’d tried to share.

They just wanted to tell me their story. They saw me give a brief mention of my various illnesses, and they were desperate to tell me, “Me too!”. They related. They understood. They had been there as well. God wasn’t using my post in the way I expected. He was simply using it to tell other people that they weren’t alone. There was someone else with illness too. There was someone else who was young and chronically ill. There was someone else who believed that Lyme and mold and MCS and other illness existed. There was someone else who had some comprehension of what it felt like.

So today, I want to tell you the same thing: you’re not alone. I’ve written posts about this before. But I want to tell you again today, just in case you need a reminder.

You.

Are.

Not.

Alone.

Chronic illness is so much more common than most people realize. Including those who are ill. The more and more I write about illness and interact with the chronic illness community, I realize how many of us there are…. many of us feeling alone.

Maybe that’s because a lot of us find it hard to talk about our illness. Maybe that’s because it’s hard for many of us to be social. Who knows! But there’s a lot more of us than we realize.

No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to mankind. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it. -1 Corinthians 10:13 (NIV)