My old friend has returned

After a three year remission, my rheumatoid arthritis has returned. I don't know what the cause is, perhaps the fact that I got sick right after Hawaii and sickness can cause a flare-up, or maybe the fact that anything past 8 weeks is just too long an interval right now to go without medication, or it could just randomly have shown up. I don't know and I don't even care all that much because how does that affect me? The RA is here, and I get my medication again next week.

At first I was super mad and anxious about it because it's really painful and I'm not looking forward to being in pain all the time again. I was laying in my bed on Sunday night, because that is when my RA was keeping me up with my right shoulder being in pain (thank you to my sister Tiff who is in Hawaii who I called and talked to to get my mind off it!) and I was just thinking to myself, "what if this is my RA coming back for good? What can I do with my life? What kind of life can I have?" basically playing the "woe is me" game and then I remembered something from church that very day. My pastor was talking about the truth of the Scriptures and how its truth can overcome any of my negative thoughts and how the devil can really get me off-balance by feeding me and maintaining those "you're worthless" ideas that come into your head.

2 Corinthians 10:4-5 says, "The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we *take captive every thought* to make it obedient to Christ."

We're always going to have those negative thoughts like "you're not good enough" "why should anyone care about you?" or "you can't do it" but those are untruths that the enemy uses because they're so darn effective! But I was able to put a stop to my pity party and tell myself that those thoughts I was having were untrue, that I knew exactly what I was going to do with my life, that I was still going to glorify God and make disciples, and that He was going to give me the strength and energy to make that happen. Right away I felt better because I had attacked those bad thoughts with the truth and didn't dwell on them.

Man, I was so excited about how relevant God's Word is!! It was written so long ago, and yet it still impacts my days in the here and now, I mean, that is awesome and God is so personal!!

So while I am not a fan of my RA being back, I know I can tell myself the truth, that even though I may not like it, I can deal with it God's way and focus on others. Because it's either God's way where I can rest in the fact that even though I don't understand it, He has a perfect plan for it and will give me an abundant life (John 10:10) or I can deal with it my way and try to ignore it, throw myself pity party after pity party, get bitter when people don't understand what I'm going through and be depressed on the inside about how "wrong" my life went. Yeah, no contest!

God is good no matter the circumstances, *no matter the circumstances,* and this may just be a temporary blip on the radar or it could be the beginning of a long relationship with the pain again, I don't know, but God does and He said He can handle it so I am giving it to Him to let Him take that burden (Ps. 55:22 - Cast your burden upon the Lord and He will sustain you; He will never allow the righteous to be shaken). My only job is to continue to love and glorify Him and let others know how much He has changed my life and perspective. So no matter what happens or how long I have to deal with the RA, God is still good and He is still worthy of my life.