I'm tired of fear

I'm tired today, worn out from a busy, busy week, and possibly fighting some kind of bug. This leaves me achy, with a slightly "raw" feeling to my nerves. These are all normal sensations, shouldn't really be anything to worry about.

The problem is that I don't really trust that it'll stop there. Almost six years ago I ended up in the hospital a couple of weeks after a bout of the flu. My immune system had turned traitor on me, was somehow tricked into thinking my nerves were the flu virus and was attempting to kill off the invader - by killing my nerves. I was incredibly lucky that my case of Guillain-Barre Syndrome was basically mild, my paralysis was relatively minor, my recovery after treatment ostensibly complete.

But in truth, I do have some lasting damage. When my nervous system is stressed, I can "feel it" in some of the areas where my nerves were most affected - a physical sensation of slight "rawness" that stays at a level where I'm not really sure if I'm feeling it or imagining it, that I don't remember experiencing before the GBS. Even more clearly - while the experts say that I have just as much a chance of ever having GBS again as you have of getting it - I don't really believe that. I'm sure that anyone who has suffered from an auto-immune disorder or other un-explainable illness must have asked the same kind of question - "how could my body betray me that way?". It seems like there must have been some reason, some tendency or condition, that made my immune system susceptible to this syndrome.

Every time that I have gotten sick since that time, I struggle with some degree of fear that it will happen again. It's never been debilitating fear, and it continues to lessen through the years (unless I go read people's stories about GBS, which do include stories of recurrence, that can spike the fear again!). My fear today, with my slightly raw nerves and tired body, is really pretty minimal - but it's there.

So why am I writing about this? I worry there's an element of wanting your attention, and that's probably partly true. But I also know that we all have something, whether it be physical, or emotional, or circumstantial, that affects our ability to trust God. And that's what it comes down to - can I trust God to care for me? Whatever the statistics might be, whatever the condition of my body - can I trust that God looks on me with love and care, and will take me through whatever comes?

I hope so.

I wish I could claim more faith than that.