If you’ve ever attended a church service then you probably have heard the term “free will” before. If you haven’t, it is often said during many of them that all of us here on planet earth are given this from the day we are born, to the day we die, and what we do with it is up to us. For the longest time I utilized that principle to the extreme by living my life exactly how I wanted to live it, regardless of how God may have felt about it. But as I began to work a lot more on myself spiritually, the greater I became willing to give up my free will and ask instead for what God would want of me. Lately I’ve been struggling to stick with this though, solely because of the health issues I continue to deal with.
You see I’ve come to understand one thing about what it means to follow God’s will. Sometimes it involves a lot of waiting. In other words, it requires a tremendous amount of patience. While I’ve grown in that department quite a bit in the past few years, this summer has been particularly trying given how many I’ve already had to watch go by from the sidelines. Some of those who have witnessed my frustration over this recently have suggested that maybe God isn’t going to deliver me out of this and that I should use my free will to pursue other options. A few years ago it was rather easy for me to ignore when people said things like this to me, but now I feel it’s becoming more and more difficult to do and it’s caused me to occasionally ponder the free-will based choices I could pursue.
The first is one that any person who has lived with chronic pain on any level for an extended period has probably considered at some point or another, and that’s to take his or her own life. My father did this very thing because of his own pain and honestly, it’s really the last thing I would ever want to do. Yet on those days when my pain has been through the roof, I’d be lying if I said those thoughts didn’t cross my mind.
The second choice is to go back to an addiction-laden life. Basically, what that means is to spend the rest of my days in a haze of booze, drugs, and sex, because my brain says it will help me have a little more ease and comfort with what I’m going through. Unfortunately, my brain also tries to forget all the intense pain and suffering each of those addictions caused me the last time I engaged in any of them.
The third choice is the one that people seem to keep trying to push my way the most, and that’s to go back to doctors and get some prescriptions to help make things a lot easier for me. Ironically, my mind tries to convince me I should do this on a regular basis, even knowing that the last time I tried this route that it ended with me in even greater pain after a year of pursuing it.
Lastly, the fourth and final choice I have is to do keep on doing what I’ve been doing to heal, to adhere to my holistic path, and to trust and remain patient with God like I’ve been trying to do, day in and day out for a good while now. This of course is the healthiest choice of them all, and truly the only one where I believe my free will matches that of God’s will.
Thus I believe it’s pretty clear what the best choice is for me. It’s the one where I continue remaining patient, enduring this pain, and maintaining faith that the path I’ve chosen will pay off. I’ve made it this far under God’s watch, so as much as my ego keeps trying to convince me to exercise my free will and try something else, I’m opting to stay with option #4, because it’s the only one that I truly believe will bring me to the other side of this…
Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson