"Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness." — Lamentations 3:22-23

I want to wake up every morning like the people in mattress commercials.

They sit up, arms stretching in a slow arc, faces lit with bliss as the company jingle plays. Their smiles are presumably a result of the incredible night’s rest this new mattress provided. “The best sleep of your life,” a voice on the television promises. These people rise out of bed with energy and delight, ready to take on anything.

 I, sadly, do not wake up like the mattress commercial people.

 I crack one eyeball open, hit snooze for 9 minutes (who decided 9 minutes is the universal time for snooze?), and crawl out of bed on fumes. This is because a chronic illness has attached itself to me like a ugly, heavy backpack. It comes everywhere with me, and there are times when it feels like it swallows me whole.

I was sixteen, reading the Psalms as I wept in bed from the neurological symptoms that overwhelmed my brain.

I was twenty, angry and frightened at my limitations as I moved home from college to rest and heal. 

I was twenty-two, worried I wouldn’t make it through my own wedding because of my symptoms. 

I was twenty-four, still working part-time because I didn’t have the energy to do more.

I am twenty-six, begging God to heal me as I trust and wait and watch.

This winter marks 10 years since my diagnosis, and it easily could have felt like a decade of darkness. 

But instead, it has been a decade of light and spiritual delight. As I wept, God drew me to himself. As I rested, God comforted me. As I have rearranged my life a million times to accommodate this illness that has overstayed its welcome in my body, God has pulled sin tendencies and unbelief out of me like one of those endless scarves clowns pull out of their pockets—every time I think we’ve extracted enough sin, more spills out.

“In this world you will have trouble,” Jesus told his disciples (John 16:33). Trouble comes in many forms: sickness, conflict, betrayal, dashed dreams, or sin that piles up and suffocates us. Some suffering is simply the result of a broken world, and some we bring upon ourselves in the brokenness of our own sin. In all our trials, we long for the day when wholeness comes.

I used to ask, “How long, O Lord?” as a purely logistical question. 

"How long until I can stop treatments?" 

"How long until I can work full time?” 

My question was very business-like, since surely health was right around the bend.

I sat in bed a few years ago, my purple pen pouring out prayers to God in my journal, asking “how long?” again. But this time, it was not logistics or business that had me questioning. This time, it hit me squarely in my soul that this might be forever—and it knocked the wind out of me. But there in the quiet I knew that however long this would last, God is with me longer.

 “Cast your cares on the LORD and he will sustain you,” says Psalm 55:22. It is a lovely verse, but a friend of mine used to grow frustrated with it.

“I would cast my cares on the LORD, and my problems would still be there!” she told me. “But then I realized it doesn’t say God would fix me; it says he will sustain me.”

God’s mercy carries us through everything. In his mercy, he uses suffering to sanctify. In his mercy, he comforts us as we grieve. In his mercy, he dwells with us through the Spirit. And in his mercy, he will one day put the world right. We catch a glimpse of the new heaven and earth in Revelation 21:4 as we read, “‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.’” 

Sometimes I feel like my sickness swallows up everything good. I feel consumed by it. 

But I am not consumed.   

"Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed,” the writer of Lamentations encourages us, “for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness" (3:22-23). Whether we feel consumed by sickness or sin, conflict or catastrophe, it will all come to an end because of the faithfulness of Christ. In the same verse Jesus promises trouble in this lifetime, he promises victory, telling us to “take heart! I have overcome the world” (John 16:33).

Every morning when I wake up and look across my room, I see a pillow propped on a chair with lettering that reads, “His mercies are new every morning.” It reminds me that though I do not arise from bed every morning with new energy like the people in the mattress commercials, I arise with new mercies from my Savior—and that is much better. God’s mercy is a ship I sail in, tucked safely in the stern above the waves. And though I feel the splash of them, I won’t drown. They won’t consume me. How could they? My soul is eternally secure in the mercy of Christ.