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You are with a group of friends having a great time, laughing, fellowshipping, how good it is to just be together.  Then a few girls decide to trek down to the creek and cool off in the water.  Your heart sinks and your mouth grows a little dry.  You know your legs will never carry you so far.  It is a good idea.  It is a scorching day.  Soon everyone is gone, except for you.  You are left, forgotten, how could they understand, those who have never known ill health, what it is to not be able to follow?

After church on Wednesday evening everyone gathers to talk, everyone that is except you.  Your back is aching so badly it is all you can do to sit there in your seat very still.  Going to join one of the groups, those standing groups, is so beyond your reach.  So you sit.  You don’t even have the energy to try and look cheerful.  The pain steals your smile and you are left alone and hurting in more places than just your back.  Still you want to move, to go be part of all that is happening, but you can’t.  They must all think you’re stuck up, that you want to sit here by yourself.  How could you ever explain it?  But then no one is stopping long enough to listen anyway.

So when you are ill you get left behind.  It comes with the territory as painful as that may be.  There are just some things you can no longer do and so you have to stay put when everyone is walking, sit down when everyone is standing up and sleep when everyone else is talking their hearts out into the night.  Illness is an isolater.  It is easier to accept your own limitations though when people around you recognize them and so do their best to help ease you though the hardness of being left.  However, sometimes they don’t.  So how do we respond?  What do we do with the emotions and struggles that being left behind brings.  It is a journey like everything else about illness and so something that we will not learn in a day.  The best comfort I can think of as I write is found in Mark 14:50 speaking of Jesus’ arrest the Bible tells us “Then they all deserted Him and ran away.”  Oh how much deeper those words sink into our hearts now!  It was easy before to just pass over them, to forget that our Savior had emotions too.  What must it have been like to be abandoned at such a hour to have to face such a time alone??  Oh yes, my dear sisters our Jesus knows, and He does not just know objectively.  He can emphasis with us on this level also because He was left too.  How much more precious to us does our Savior become with such a revelation!  And more that that, He is One who will never ever leave us.  So the next time others forget you, talk to Him, lean on Him.  He will always be there for you.  

I am convinced that God allows these hard things, these valleys, this dark, to bring us closer to Himself.  As precious as the gift of friendship among mortals is how much greater to have true deep fellowship with our Savior.  How much better to learn more of Him.  Even though it might sometimes seem more pleasant to our sinful selves to be able to go through life never having a friend let us down it would be far worse to have that fleeting pleasure and so never turn and lean on Him.  Yes, it hurts to be left but He is willing for us to be hurt that we may gain what will serve us much better than earthly companions ever could - a greater closeness to Him