Peace. It’s an often overlooked word in the busy, chaotic, hamster-wheel lives we so often find ourselves in. But it is a life changing word, a word that Jesus came to embody as our Prince of Peace, and one that He gave up His life for so that we could experience. It helps usher in so many more traits of the Holy Spirit – joy being one, and where we find the abundant life God has waiting for us when we reject fear because we have sought peace.

Right now, left up to my own spiraling thoughts and meager strength, I would be paralyzed with fear. After exhausting all other options for the past 5 years, including more cervical injections than I can count, this Wednesday I will have surgery to fuse my skull base to C2, which will mean I’ll never be able to move my neck again. I’ll have 8 screws drilled into the base of my skull to secure a piece of hardware that will replace those cervical discs, and then cadaver bone grafted over the C1 and C2 vertebrae, drilled into place with 4 more screws.

I have a condition called craniocervical instability (CCI) which means that the ligaments that hold my skull onto my neck are damaged, so when I move my head, my skull shifts off of my spine. This excessive movement compresses my brainstem and cranial nerves and caused an ischemic stroke two and a half years ago. The symptoms are at times debilitating and include headaches, neck & eye pain, head pressure, vision issues, dizziness, nausea, inability to regulate my heart rate, breathing & temperature, chronic fatigue, tinnitus, brain fog & often trouble speaking. This surgery has always been a last resort, but ever since having the stroke I’ve known that I had to do whatever it took to stabilize my craniocervical junction. However fear was still holding me back from taking this leap of faith…and as I’ve come to see…the abundance I believe God has waiting for me!

Two years ago I went to DC for the first time to start working with an incredibly knowledgeable neurosurgical group who specialize in CCI. In March I had cervical fusion to fix a lower disc that was stretching my spinal cord, and our hopes were that it might alleviate my symptoms enough to call it a day there. That surgery fixed what it was supposed to but not what we hoped for. Then in June I had a lumbar puncture to alleviate high intracranial pressure, that again we hoped would be enough symptom relief…but it wasn’t. In July my surgeon and I made the decision to move ahead with this fusion, after my imaging has been progressively worse, but I still wasn’t sure it was the right move. And so I started praying for peace. Every day I asked God to either fill me with peace, or fill me with the complete opposite of it. I started meditating on Isaiah 26:3, and it took on a whole new power and meaning.

This verse promises not temporary calm, but says God will KEEP us surrounded by an unwavering peace when we lock eyes with HIM, rather than looking at the mountain in front of us. And that is exactly what He has done for me through the countdown these past two months. Literally every day, often many times throughout the day, God has affirmed this decision. And then having that peace blanketing my mind has freed me to see handprints of Gods love, promises and victory in so many, many ways. Last Sunday our sermon was about saying “yes” to the calling God has for us, and Pastor Bill Johnson said, “by keeping ourselves from the conflict we were born for, we actually keep ourselves from the strength we were designed for.” And how sometimes our “yes” leads us to a battlefield. God leads us there because he wants to give us strength. Each of us are designed to walk in the victory Jesus paid for, but to walk in victory, we must be willing to enter the battle. As we submit to His calling on our lives, He will equip, nourish, and strengthen us, and above all, give us supernatural grace to see it to completion!

I have watched myself slip away these past 5 years, as month after month of symptoms have chipped away at my resolve, drained my strength, made it harder and harder to engage with people and activities, and caused me to burry my passion and zest for life beneath the weight of my condition. I do the bare minimum to get by…but that’s enough, right? In my own strength I’d keep back peddling, clinging to what I am still able to do. But is that really living? These past months as I’ve read His Word, I have been claiming the promises that God wants to give us new life, fullness of life, abundant life, victorious life! To break yolks of oppression from our necks (that one really got me!) and instead receive a yolk shared with Him. And that through the journey He gives power to the weak and strength to the powerless; perfect love that drives out fear; abundant grace that covers the mess we make; His abiding Spirit who intercedes for us when we’re too weak to pray; joy even in the face of life’s hardships; and PERFECT, unwavering, peace.

Will I have hard, painful days ahead? Yes. Will this surgery present new challenges that I’ll have to deal with for the rest of my life? Yes. But do I have to rely on my own expectations for the healing that will take place, and for everything that I will gain? Not in the slightest! And do I have to rely on my own strength to fight this battle? Not even a little. On the contrary, God is eagerly waiting to show up even more than I’ve ever seen before! Eager to show off his muscles, eager to delight His child with the abundance He has in store! My other prayers these past months have been for just that – that God would use this surgery to not only restore me better than ever before, but that God would be praised and glorified in doing so. And also glorified through my struggles. And an amazing thing has happened – I have come to see through this daily fight for faith, this daily choice to lock eyes with God, that I can already claim victory and abundance because of the ways He has used this to stretch my faith, grow my roots deep into the soil, blanket me with His peace, and give me joy in the face of suffering.

One morning a few weeks back I was having my coffee and time with God, and one of the verses I read was 2 Timothy 1:7, “for God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but of power, love, and self-discipline.”

I realized that I had become reliant on yesterdays peace, and wrote in my journal that day, “fear is subtle…it creeps in. It’s not a deluge, instead it’s like a very gentle rain. One droplet of doubt here, another one there, slowly building until the ground is suddenly saturated, and you’re no longer on solid footing. I’ve seen it creeping in this week, I’ve started second guessing my need for this surgery and my ability to work and cook after it. But my loving Father knows that, and because I came to Him this morning FIRST – to fill me up, He did just that. Encouraging me with promises to cast out fear, reminding me of His faithfulness, encouraging me by having me look back on parts of my story, and promising me that there’s no brokenness he can’t restore, nothing He won’t redeem.”

This past week was one of the busiest I’ve had in a while, and pushed me to my limits while also being incredibly rewarding. It started off on Sunday by my cooking dinner for 50 people at a horse farm in Ocala, and ended on Thursday evening with the grand opening of my integrative health clinic which I also made all of the food for. They were amazing events and every day I thanked God for His provision and for the strength to carry on. As I was doing some of the final food prep on Thursday, I started trying to chop without looking down. I was only moving my eyes and it was painful and I almost lost a finger. I started to panic, thinking that I’d never cook again. But then almost immediately I felt God near, and I cried out to Him that I knew He wouldn’t bring me this far just to abandon me. That I was claiming is promises of hope and a future. And that whatever happened after surgery, I knew was part of His perfect plan for me. A sudden sense of calm washed over me, and I went back to cooking. And then a little voice said to me, “hinge at your waist” and when I did that, I could chop just fine without moving my neck down! I have found that God wants us to seek Him first in these times of helplessness we so often face – and then he delights in showing off his strength, and rewards us for turning to Him. The rest of that day I kept quoting Psalm 34:4-8, “I prayed to the Lord, and he answered me. He freed me from all my fears. Those who look to him for help will be radiant with joy; no shadow of shame will darken their faces. In my desperation I prayed, and the Lord listened; he saved me from all my troubles. For the angel of the Lord is a guard; he surrounds and defends all who fear him. Taste and see that the Lord is good. Oh, the joys of those who take refuge in him!”

Monday morning as I was making my coffee (coffee is tangible proof that God loves us😆) getting ready to head to the airport for DC, I stood in my kitchen utterly amazed that I wasn’t crippled by fear by what could go wrong during this surgery, and what it will mean for my future. I truly had Gods peace that “passes understanding” in that my mind can’t understand how I can have this perfect peace! But then I was quickly reminded how it’s possible…as I started a new devotional with my Peer Servants group and this was the opening:

Do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing!

And these verses followed…

“The Lord is my strength and my song; he has given me victory. Songs of joy and victory are sung in the camp of the godly. The strong right arm of the Lord has done glorious things! The strong right arm of the Lord is raised in triumph. The strong right arm of the Lord has done glorious things! Psalms 118:14-17, 24 NLT

And my mom just minutes after, texted me that she woke up singing songs of victory! And I have to give a shout-out to my Mom, who has been an example to me of seeking God above all else, listening to the quiet voice of the Holy Spirit, and moving in Gods strength and leading, not my own. And who has been by my side through every single surgery…this will be number nine, and far too many procedures to count. Her selfless love, steadfast prayer, and abiding hope are pictures of Christ to me.

That day, my sweet, prayer warrior friend Leslie prayed Psalm 20 over me..

“May the name of the God of Jacob protect you. May he send you help from the sanctuary and grant you support from Zion… May he give you the desire of your heart and make all your plans succeed. May we shout for joy over your victory and lift up our banners in the name of our God. May the Lord grant all your requests. Now this I know: The Lord gives victory to his anointed. He answers him from his heavenly sanctuary with the victorious power of his right hand. Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the Lord our God.”

And if you read my last post…I talked about how over a year ago God had said very clearly that it would be Him who heals me, and given me that last verse as assurance. My surgeon has prayed over me before every surgery, and before my last procedure he prayed that I’d be filled with Gods Spirit, that God would guide his hands and that God would heal me. My surgeon knows that his skill, his knowledge, his ability to heal is only because of his God working through him. And that it will be God who heals me!

Surgery is at 7:30 tomorrow morning. It’s four hours long, and my surgeon will work with his colleague for the entirety of it. They will use about five different measurements and fluoroscopic guidance to position my head at just the perfect angle before locking it into place, remove the cervical discs, install the hardware and cadaver bone, and then harvest stem cells from my hip and inject them into the surgical site. I was really excited to learn this last part, as stem cells have the amazingly unique ability to become whatever type of cell the body needs, giving an upgrade to the healing process. Please join me and so many others in prayer this week, for the hands of my surgeons, for no complications, for perfect results and for healing in more ways than I can even begin to imagine!!

I know that this is going to be a season filled with a lot of pain, but I also know that there is nothing that I can’t overcome with God‘s strength. And I am thanking Him for His costly gift of Christ’s life, death and resurrection that enable me to have this peace, this joy and this hope of earthly victory, and assurance of an eternal reward and perfectly restored body one day for all of eternity!