The Thorn That Remains
Some prayers come out ordered and calm.
Others come out scattered.
Raw.
Unfiltered.
This one belongs to the second kind.
Because today I find myself wrestling with something that has lived quietly in the background of my faith for years. It is not doubt. It is not disbelief. It is something more complex than that.
It is the tension between what Jesus has healed in my life… and what He has not.
I believe deeply that Jesus heals.
That conviction is not theoretical for me. It was not handed to me through someone else’s testimony. It was forged in moments where my life hung in the balance.
I have seen death up close.
When I was eighteen years old, I contracted meningococcal disease. It moved through my body violently and quickly. I slipped into a coma and hovered somewhere between life and death. Doctors were not sure if I would survive.
But I did.
And when I woke up, I knew something had happened to me that went far beyond medicine.
I encountered the presence of Jesus Christ.
It is difficult to put that into perfect language. Experiences like that do not fit neatly inside sentences. But I know this with absolute clarity: my life did not belong to me anymore.
Something had shifted.
Something sacred had touched my soul.
That moment has shaped everything that came after.
But my story did not begin with meningococcal disease, and it certainly did not end there.
Long before that moment, my life had already been marked by pain and survival.
I was born with severe physical conditions that required immediate intervention. My first operation happened when I was only three days old. Over the years that followed, I would undergo twenty-six major operations.
Twenty-six.
When people hear that number, they often pause. It sounds almost unreal. But when you live through something like that, the surgeries become chapters in a long story rather than isolated events.
Each operation carries its own memories.
Hospital rooms.
Recovery beds.
Pain that becomes strangely familiar.
And somewhere along the way, those experiences begin to shape you in ways that are difficult to fully understand while you are still living inside them.
Pain plants seeds.
Some seeds grow into resilience.
Some grow into fear.
Some grow into strength.
And some… remain buried deep beneath the surface for years.
After surviving meningococcal disease, I walked forward with a deep awareness that my life had been spared for a reason.
But survival does not erase everything that came before it.
Trauma leaves layers.
Life continues unfolding.
And somewhere along the road I also found myself walking through addiction.
Addiction is another kind of thorn.
It grows quietly at first. It whispers rather than shouts. But eventually it begins wrapping itself around the heart in ways that are difficult to untangle.
There were seasons in my life where alcohol became something I leaned on more than I should have.
Not because I wanted to destroy myself.
But because pain has a way of searching for relief.
And sometimes people reach for the wrong things when they are trying to quiet wounds they don’t yet understand.
By the grace of God, that chapter did not end in destruction.
Jesus met me there too.
He pulled me out of that darkness and into sobriety.
But the deeper truth is that healing is not always a single moment.
Sometimes it is a lifelong process.
Which brings me back to the question that has been stirring in my heart today.
Why does God heal some things immediately… while allowing other things to remain?
There are parts of my life that have been radically transformed.
My addiction no longer owns me.
My faith is real and alive.
My life has purpose in ways I could not see when I was younger.
But there are still places inside me where I feel unfinished.
Still wounds that occasionally ache.
Still memories that surface unexpectedly.
Still pieces of my past that feel like buried seeds I am slowly trying to unearth.
And sometimes I pray about those things.
Sometimes I ask Jesus to take them away.
To remove them completely.
To bring total restoration.
But there are moments where I sense that some of these things may remain.
Not because God has abandoned me.
But because they are doing something inside me.
That is where the words of the Apostle Paul have been echoing in my mind lately.
Paul speaks about a “thorn in the flesh.”
We are never told exactly what that thorn was. Scholars have debated it for centuries. Some believe it was physical illness. Others believe it was persecution or spiritual struggle.
But whatever it was, Paul clearly did not want it.
He pleaded with God to remove it.
Three times he asked.
Three times he prayed.
Three times the answer came back in a way that must have surprised him.
“My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”
That response reframes everything.
It tells us something profound about the way God sometimes works.
Sometimes God heals the wound.
Sometimes He leaves the thorn.
And when He leaves it, He is not abandoning us.
He is anchoring us.
Because the thorn keeps us dependent.
When I look honestly at my life, I can see how that might be true.
If every wound inside me disappeared tomorrow, if every trace of trauma was instantly erased, if every insecurity vanished completely…
I might begin believing that I no longer needed grace.
But the thorn does not allow that illusion to survive.
The thorn reminds me that I am still human.
Still fragile.
Still in need of the mercy of God every single day.
And strangely, that realization has begun to shift the way I view these unresolved parts of my life.
They are not simply wounds.
They are reminders.
Reminders that my story is still unfolding.
Reminders that God is still working in the soil of my heart.
Because the seeds planted through trauma do not all reveal themselves immediately.
Some lie buried for years.
Hidden.
Waiting.
And part of the journey of healing is learning how to carefully unearth those seeds.
Not all at once.
But slowly.
Prayerfully.
With Jesus walking beside you as you dig.
There are still seeds inside my life that I am discovering.
Seeds planted through surgeries.
Seeds planted through illness.
Seeds planted through addiction.
Seeds planted through fear and insecurity.
And sometimes when those seeds begin to surface, I bring them to Jesus again.
I lay them at His feet.
Not with perfect faith.
But with honest faith.
Faith that says: Lord, I still need you here.
Maybe that is what the thorn is really doing.
It keeps bringing us back to the feet of Christ.
Over and over again.
The thorn keeps us kneeling.
It keeps our hearts soft.
It keeps our prayers real.
Paul eventually reached a place where he said something remarkable.
That statement is not the voice of a man who has escaped suffering.
It is the voice of a man who has discovered the strange power hidden inside weakness.
Because weakness keeps us close to grace.
So today, as I reflect on my life — the surgeries, the illness, the addiction, the encounter with death at eighteen, and the long journey of faith that followed — I find myself praying a slightly different prayer.
I still ask Jesus for healing.
I still believe He can remove every thorn.
But I also pray this.
Lord, if there are things in my life you choose not to remove… then let them keep me close to you.
Let them remind me that I am still dependent on your grace.
Let them keep me laying my life down at your feet.
Because the truth is that I would rather walk through life with a thorn that keeps me near Christ…
Than live a life where I no longer feel my need for Him.
The thorn may remain.
But so does grace.
And in the end, grace is more than enough.
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