Understanding Understanding

How do you understand things? How do you process things? Do you understand what the word understand means?

Let's rewind a little bit, or a lotta bit to September 2011 when I started this here blog. I was in the hospital, had been told I probably wouldn't make it, wasn't conscious really for a while, but then I made it and they still wouldn't let me leave for a long time because my Potassium was critically low (which at the time as a just lost her job special ed teacher had no idea what that meant, now as an almost dietitian I know that means serious business), so I was bored and frustrated and didn't have any social connection and started this. Now it has almost 1500 views which I never imagined, I never thought I would post such intimate details about my life on the world wide web (heck my assistant didn't even know how sick I was as you do, heck my principal didn't even know how sick I was as you do), but here we are. Today.

Oh wait, I wasn't done rewinding. Right. Besides being bored in the hospital, I also started this blog as my personal journal and reflection on my healing journey through losing my job, moving away from my "home", healing from my illnesses (whatever that means), and anything else I felt like I needed to get off my chest at the moment. I entitled my Blog "Won Peace at a Time" because it is about my journey of healing that would hopefully be peaceful and hopefully I would win it, so that's why the play on words are in there. Also, since I was an Autism teacher, and the puzzle piece is their symbol so the piece came from that too because I wanted to keep them close to me as well. When I wrote my about section I put "I am a young adult woman, who thought I had it all together, then realized I didn't. Which, I am fairly certain happens to all of us. However, it happened to me all very fast and in all aspects of my life. I lost my health, my job, and basically my whole life as I know it all within the span of a month. I am putting my life back together one piece at a time and hope to do it with peace. Hope you enjoy as I seek to keep my identity in Christ while putting my life back together into what He wants me to be!" So like I said, this blog was to be my place where I could write things out to help myself understand my life a little better one piece at a time.

Ok, done rewinding. Present day. As in literally today. Back to my question. How do you understand things?

Let me tell you what I would like my answer to be, what my answer should be. "Hey God, I know you love me, I know you made me for your will. I know I am perfect in your eyes. I know there is a purpose for everything. I know that I am fearfully and wonderfully made. I do not need an explanation. I am trusting you with my whole mind (and body). I am not leaning on my own understanding."

Let me tell ya what my answer IS, as in I had this crazy revelation I'm getting to (in a minute I promise) 5 hours ago and I'm still actively understanding like this instead (which isn't bad, but should be secondary):

• Let me Google every symptom I ever have and see which is gonna kill me first
• Let me go to another 20 doctors until  I find one that tells me something I WANT to hear
• Let me try another cocktail of 30 pills a day and see if the side effects or reliefs are different this time
• Let me join 400 support groups on Facebook to see what they have to say about this and to see if they feel the same way I do so I don't feel as crazy
• Let me try to do my own master's thesis (voluntarily) to find a "cure" for one of my diseases
• Let me go to class all day to the point that I can't function and heal at all to learn a little minuscule amount of information about my problems to understand better
• Let me be too tired to focus on my Bible Study I've been haphazardly doing all semester until it smacks me across the face on the last video session and makes me realize that maybe I should have been paying attention and I wouldn't need to be seeking understanding from so many other sources for so long. 

I don't think that last part was in there. As Christian's we always say that we do the right things, we go to our Bible study every week, we check all the boxes off, and we get to Heaven, right? Wrong. Basically.

Basically, I spent all semester going on auto-pilot all throughout my day and checked all the boxes off, then it was Thursday at 6 and it was time for Small Group and I went and I had my homework, that was done to the point the questions were filled in, but I didn't think about the answers, because I didn't have time. 

Tonight was the last night, the video part, we were doing a Beth Moore study. I could listen to Beth Moore read the Bible to me all day long. She has such a way with words and emotion and imagery, and tonight her words and emotion and imagery slapped me right across the face. 

Ya know what tonight's study was on? Understanding. She pointed out that the Greek word for understanding is suniemi which means "assembling individual facts into an organized whole, as collecting the pieces of a puzzle and putting them together." Beth used the bible verse Matthew 13:15 (message version below) to back her up on this and it said,

 "Your ears are open but you don't hear a thing.
Your eyes are awake but you don't see a thing.
The people are blockheads!
They stick fingers in their ears
so they won't have to listen;
They screw their eyes shut
so they won't have to look,
so they won't have to deal with me face-to-face
and LET ME HEAL THEM."

Basically God is telling me to stop.and.let.Him.heal.me.

I need to stop shutting Him out. I need to listen to Him. I'm doing all this research trying to find "understanding", trying to put all these individual facts into an organized whole, trying to put together all these puzzle pieces one at a time and forgetting the One who holds the last piece. The peace of the puzzle. The One with the understanding. The One who knows why.

I know I will not be healed on Earth. But I know that God knows why. I know that He has a purpose. I know that He holds the key to my suniemi, He holds the last piece to my puzzle. It's the peace His son brought by dying on the cross. Making it true that we don't need earthly understanding, the understanding we have in Him is enough.

And this is further confirmation, 1 year 5 months and 27 days later, why I need to rely on God to get me through this healing process with understanding one piece at a time.