I Asked Him To Take It Away

She has stopped counting, which she never thought she would do, because the counting was a kind of hope.

For six years she could have told you how many times. She knew. It was a number she carried and it went up, and each increase felt like something, the way a total feels like something.

And somewhere in the seventh year the counting stopped, not as a decision, and she noticed about four months after it had happened.

The thing is not going to be described. It is hers, it is not going away, she has been to everybody she should go to and is doing everything she is supposed to do medically and otherwise, and it is a permanent feature of her life and everybody involved now knows that.

And she still asks. That is what she cannot explain to anybody, including herself. She still asks Him to take it away, most weeks, and she has no expectation whatsoever that He will, and she cannot work out what she is doing.

She is not holding out hope. She is not resigned either. She is doing both at once and she has run out of room to keep doing that.

If you are holding two things that will not fit, come and sit down. Nothing here is going to be resolved for you.

He asked more than once, and he was told no

Here is a passage that gets used badly more often than almost any other, and it is worth reading slowly and without the usual gloss on it.

Paul has something. He calls it a thorn in the flesh and he does not tell us what it is, which is one of the mercies of the passage, because everybody who has ever had one can put their own thing in the gap.

And he says plainly that he asked God to remove it. Not once. More than once, and he says so, and there is no suggestion anywhere that the asking was a failure of faith.

And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness.2 Corinthians 12:9

The answer is no.

That has to be said plainly before anything else, because the passage is usually presented as though grace arrived and made the no acceptable, and that is the second half rather than the first. The first half is that a man who healed other people asked for something for himself and did not get it, and wrote it down.

And notice what he does not say. He does not say the thorn was good. He does not explain the reason and he does not tell anybody it was for the best. He gives one sentence of what God said and one line of what it means and then he moves on, and the thing stays in him for the rest of his life.

You are in a passage rather than outside one, and it was already written by somebody who asked and was told no. 2 Corinthians 12:9 is where that sits, in a letter from a man who never got what he asked for about it, and the same Spirit who moved him to record the asking is the one who keeps a woman from thinking her seven years are a private failure.

Sufficient is not the same word as instead

Now the piece that matters most, and it is a word that has been mistranslated in a million sermons.

My grace is sufficient for thee. People hear that as: my grace is what you get instead of the removal, so stop asking. As though grace were a consolation item handed over at the counter after the real request was refused.

That is not what sufficient means. Sufficient means enough for the load. It is a word about capacity, and it is spoken to somebody who is still carrying the thing, and it presupposes that there is still a thing to carry.

Which is the opposite of a replacement. A replacement would mean the load is gone. Sufficient means the load is exactly where it was and there is now enough to carry it with.

And that is what she has actually been experiencing for seven years without having a word for it, because she is still standing, and she has not stopped asking, and both of those are true at once and neither has canceled the other.

She thought she was failing to resolve a contradiction. She has in fact been living inside the arrangement the verse describes.

You have been carrying it with something rather than carrying it alone, and it was already sufficient rather than instead. He promised it, in a word about capacity spoken to a man who still had the thing (2 Corinthians 12:9), and His Spirit is not a substitute handed over when a request is refused.

The paragraph that outranks the teaching

Before we go on, this outranks everything above it, and for a woman in your situation it is the most important paragraph on this page.

Nothing on this site connects going without food to anybody getting well, to a thing being removed, or to any medical outcome whatsoever. Fasting is not a treatment. You stay with your doctors, you keep doing exactly what they tell you, and nothing on this page is ever to be weighed against their advice.

And some people must not go without food at all. If you live with diabetes, if you are pregnant or nursing, if you take medication, if you have ever had a hard relationship with food or with eating, if you are underweight, unwell, frail or elderly, or if you are not sure, speak to your doctor first and let their answer be the answer. There is no length on this page, no kind of fast, no plan and no schedule.

And nothing here is a lever. Nothing you do, or have failed to do, in seven years has affected this, and there is no arrangement in which more of something produces the removal. And nothing on this page tells you the asking should stop.

You are not holding a mechanism, and you were never handed one to operate. Scripture settled that where the kingdom is named as not a matter of eating and drinking (Romans 14:17), and the Holy Spirit is named in that same verse as what it actually consists of.

If today is heavier than a page can hold, call somebody real: your doctor, a counselor, or a crisis line, and the emergency services if you or anybody near you is in danger tonight.