​Today I have the privilege of welcome Bethany to R535 for the second blog post in our ‘What 5 Christian Teens Have Learned Through Their Long-Term Illness’ blog series! I’m so excited for you to read her post, it’s such a blessing and encouragement to me, and I hope it will be to you too.

I was lying in bed-again. Just the night before I had prayed and asked God to give me the grace to be able to serve Him, even in a simple way. Maybe just blessing my family and those around me. Maybe something more exciting, like missions work. I didn’t really care-I just wanted to be able to bless someone and feel like my life wasn’t simply a drain on other people’s resources.

Yet that morning I was still trapped in my sick body, unable to cope with normal stress or complete a full school load or even fold laundry. Utter exhaustion filled my bones. The terrifying part was there was nothing I could do about it. I could only wait it out and hope I would gain more energy.

The feeling of helplessness, of my need to depend on others, of my utter inability to serve God the way I wanted seared my soul. I desperately wished to be able to focus on other people instead of always having to cut back, say no, and stay home.

Later that night, as I read the Scriptures, God helped me understand something.

He doesn’t need us to serve Him.

He wants you to rest where you are, and do what He’s calling you to right now.

He wants you to fight sin and extol Christ in the way you live, even if you cannot minister.

Just because I am sick doesn’t mean I can’t serve God. I can write emails and letters to bless people. I can blog. This was hard for me to grasp because I wanted to be doing the big things. But God doesn’t separate our actions into great and small. He knows what each of us are capable of.

Somehow I had been feeling guilty for my illness and how it was preventing me from working for God. I didn’t realize that the God who gave me this trial, with its unique challenges, wanted me to focus not on what I could be doing, but the here and now.

God called me to this trial, this illness. He called you to whatever you’re going through. He is waiting for you to reach out to Him and ask for grace to overcome. He wants to overcome the devil through you.

Think about that. The all-powerful Lord of Hosts could simply smite Satan down. Instead, He chooses to work through our brokenness and defy the wolf through us crippled little lambs.

Which is greater?

God didn’t want me to try to serve Him in other ways. I somehow felt like I had to get better so I could minister. But I didn’t see the truth right before my eyes. You can serve God even when bedridden and half crazy. You don’t need to do anything. Just resting in Him and defying the devil’s attempts to pervert your thinking and make you sin-this serves Him. It is an act of worship.

I used to think only missionaries were surrendering everything for God. I desired with all my heart to have the strength to be able to sacrifice like C.T. Studd or Gladys Aylward. I thought, “If only God would heal me I could serve Him.”

That night as I prayed, my mistake came before me and I saw how wrong it was. I had believed the only way I could serve God to the utmost was to leave everything behind for the mission field. But I was missing something huge: God has, in this season, called me not to missions, but to this life. This life of spoon-counting. This life of pain. This life of mental dysfunction and cognitive difficulty.

He has called me to be a light here. I am serving Him when I surrender to His plan for my life. I can witness and worship and love Him and love people now.

I won’t put it off any longer. Will you?

My name means “bright city on a hill.” I hope my writing becomes just that—my words of hope and beauty a bright gathering place and my words of longing a signpost to Heaven’s future glories. My calling dawned on me gradually, during my struggle with complicated chronic Lyme’s. In this season, I struggled to see the glitter in the gloomy March landscape. I found lacing my words together to form a coherent meaning was exhilarating. Lately I hole up in my nook to write stories, poems, and essays or study storycraft. I still have much to learn, but I am blessed to serve with my words! I write about suffering and hope at my blog, wildrosejournal.com ​