Behold, I will bring them health and healing, and I will heal them; and I will reveal to them an abundance of peace and truth.

Jeremiah 33:6

2018 was an incredible year of highs and lows.  2018 brought one of the best vacations, spending time with all my children and grandchildren in the beautiful landscape of Tennessee.  2018 brought the passing of one of the most influential and important people of my life, my mother.  The suddenness and speed of her decline and death were only matched by the incredible presence of the Holy Spirit and the wonderful times of fellowship that I had with my siblings and their families.

2018 brought the five year anniversary of Allana’s bone marrow transplant and the frustrations of all the little things that are our new normal.  Still if I were to characterize 2018 it was a year of healing and recovery.  It brought us into new ministry as a family and really for the first time since the Leukemia had us looking to our futures in service of our Lord.  Still the truth is that we were living in a state of un-health.  It was towards the latter part of the year (the fourth quarter of madness as anyone who works for a non-profit will tell you) that God began to speak to me about the healing that he had for me, for Allana and for our family.  I really didn’t understand at first. “We are doing quite well”, I said to myself. “Look at all the things that we are doing.” I certainly felt healthy.  I was inspired to lose weight after our wonderful vacation and dropped 30 lbs before Christmas, that is healthy right? I even read Emotionally Healthy Spirituality this year! So what was the deal. I was living the Hupomone life….

There are times in our lives where the situations of life force us into living in un-health.  This is not in itself a physical state but it is a spiritual reflection of a physical state.  I had been focused on Allana’s leukemia for five years.  I regularly thanked God for his miraculous interventions and for the blessing of life that have become a part of our story.  Yet still I was focused on the leukemia and the ensuing “new normal”.  Un-health had become woven into the tapestry of my world view.  This is a normal reaction to crisis.  I thought that as the crisis subsided I had slowly released the un-health that was my focus but the reality is that it became much more sublime and squeezed out sideways into our lives and decisions.  It became so much a part of us that it simply felt like health.  I unknowingly edited every decision, every move through the lens of illness and called it wisdom.  This impacted every area of our lives.

The great thing with God is there is no judgement.  His call to a year of health was not shaded with disappointment or anger.  It was simply a statement that the time had come for a change.  It was not a condemnation of the way that Allana and I had lived for the past 6 years.  It was recognition that we had passed through the wilderness and it was time to move into the Promised Land, oh and by the way, giants live there…but that’s OK. Think of it like athletes playing sports.  They play baseball through the summer season, carrying a bat and a glove.  When the season is over and they move to football, if they stay in their baseball uniforms and carry bats it is going to be a problem.  We need to be sensitive to the Holy Spirit and its leading into the seasons of our lives.  We need to be prepared to lay down the bat and the glove and pick up the pads or strip down to shorts and jerseys to make the quick runs up and down the courts of life.

I don’t honestly know what this season of health has in store for the Guidrys but we are excited about the little bit that he has shown us already!

Blessings,

Sam

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