Anti-Craving

I heard this word this evening and it set my mind whirling. Today was an especially awful day with burdens piling down on my family. Fighting medical insurance and struggling to pay medical bills along with the health problems that prompted it all made me lose any trace of hope today. I poured my heart out to my momma and told her that, even if we won the lottery tomorrow, that would only mean the bills would be paid, but the health problems would still be there. Not much of a victory. She promised to pray and I did the same before a support zoom with some especially dear MBC friends. A surprising phone call changed the trajectory of my day and restored a strand of hope. In that call was a discussion of cravings and I haven’t stopped thinking about my own cravings. I’m enrolled in a weight loss program so I automatically thought of chocolate and carbs, then my beloved Diet Coke with no nutritional value and way too much caffeine for someone battling brain tumors, followed by more time, and always always more money. After a highly anticipated event, I find myself going to bed that night feeling a bit melancholy. Empty.

Nothing on this earth can ever fully satisfy me. I expect my friends and family to fill all the empty spaces in my heart, but they cannot and I need to stop expecting it of them. I cannot fill all the empty spaces in the people I love most dearly. I can offer what I have to give but I cannot allow people to expect it of me. It isn’t fair to make my loved ones think that am the one who can make it all better. My faith is the only thing that can make me feel like I am enough and that I have enough. I go to bed tonight still with MBC, family struggles abounding, insurance battles to fight and astoundingly high bills to pay. But I go to bed with HOPE because God gave me a brief phone call that answered a prayer to be able to hear that voice today. I go to bed with HOPE because I know God is taking care of me. God has made me fruitful in the land of my affliction.