I want to invite you all to share in what God is doing in my life in hopes that it will bless and challenge you as well. What is written below is a result of a lot of prayer and discernment in what to say and tell. It is my prayer that God speak to you through this.
In His grip,
Elise Bartley
The Boy born Blind
As Jesus went along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" "Neither this man nor his parents sinned," said Jesus, "but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life. As long as it is day, we must do the work of him who sent me. Night is coming, when no one can work. While I am in the world, I am the light of the world." Having said this, he spit on the ground, made some mud with the saliva, and put it on the man's eyes. "Go," he told him, "wash in the Pool of Siloam" (this word means Sent). So the man went and washed, and came home seeing. His neighbors and those who had formerly seen him begging asked, "Isn't this the same man who used to sit and beg?" Some claimed that he was. Others said, "No, he only looks like him."
But he himself insisted, "I am the man."
"How then were your eyes opened?" they demanded.
He replied, "The man they call Jesus made some mud and put it on my eyes. He told me to go to Siloam and wash. So I went and washed, and then I could see." "Where is this man?" they asked him. "I don't know," he said. They brought to the Pharisees the man who had been blind. Now the day on which Jesus had made the mud and opened the man's eyes was a Sabbath. Therefore the Pharisees also asked him how he had received his sight. "He put mud on my eyes," the man replied, "and I washed, and now I see." Some of the Pharisees said, "This man is not from God, for he does not keep the Sabbath." But others asked, "How can a sinner do such miraculous signs?" So they were divided. Finally they turned again to the blind man, "What have you to say about him? It was your eyes he opened." The man replied, "He is a prophet." The Jews still did not believe that he had been blind and had received his sight until they sent for the man's parents. "Is this your son?" they asked. "Is this the one you say was born blind? How is it that now he can see?" "We know he is our son," the parents answered, "and we know he was born blind. But how he can see now, or who opened his eyes, we don't know. Ask him. He is of age; he will speak for himself." His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jews, for already the Jews had decided that anyone who acknowledged that Jesus was the Christ would be put out of the synagogue. That was why his parents said, "He is of age; ask him." A second time they summoned the man who had been blind. "Give glory to God," they said. "We know this man is a sinner." He replied, "Whether he is a sinner or not, I don't know. One thing I do know. I was blind but now I see!" Then they asked him, "What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?" He answered, "I have told you already and you did not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you want to become his disciples, too?" Then they hurled insults at him and said, "You are this fellow's disciple! We are disciples of Moses! We know that God spoke to Moses, but as for this fellow, we don't even know where he comes from." The man answered, "Now that is remarkable! You don't know where he comes from, yet he opened my eyes. We know that God does not listen to sinners. He listens to the godly man who does his will. Nobody has ever heard of opening the eyes of a man born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing." John 9:1-33
The Girl Born Deaf
From the time I was about a week old, I have had a severe-to-profound hearing loss in both ears. It is all that I have ever known. And though it is tempting to give you an autobiography of sorts to explain my life with this disability, I don’t think that is really the point of God moving me to write this before you all. My life up to this point with a hearing loss has been one of struggles and challenges as I am not able to hear as the world does. It has been one of overcoming all obstacles placed before me with such a disability. It has been one of a stubborn nature birthed within me to do things on my own, regardless of any challenges I may encounter. It has been one of God ordaining and blessing relationships I have been able to develop because of and in spite of my hearing loss. It has been a road in which God has led me into a deeper, sweeter communion with Himself as I have learned to hear what He says, not the world. The whisper of His voice has been sweeter than all of the distorted noises of the world I’ve been able to hear through the help of hearing aids. And above all, my life has been one such as the boy born blind before Jesus healed him; a life in which God has been able to glorify Himself by displaying His strength in my weakness, my inability to hear.
Until about a year and a half ago, I had never thought of the possibility of not having a hearing loss. Sure, it was a dream I could dream but seemed impossible to come true. How could this void that I have always had be filled was a question I always had. My answer was one of fully accepting and embracing my hearing loss, seeing it as a challenge to overcome.
Until a year and a half ago.
It started out in the midst of a difficult winter quarter, both academically and spiritually. I was learning so much about what it meant to rely on God and His power alone and not on myself. It was a time of falling on my face repeatedly as I tried to live life on my own strength instead of trusting God to lead me and sustain me. So many questions riddled my mind at this time, as I was venturing into a deeper relationship with God that I never had before. Slowly my eyes began to open. And suddenly, my ears began to hurt. A lot. At first I thought it was an ear infection or something, though I hadn’t had one of those in years. Something mild that could be fixed with antibiotics didn’t seem too bad. After all, doctors had always come through for me before. But then I began to have even more difficulty hearing in the midst of it. I struggled immensely to carry out my daily activities that involved communication and comprehension. And the pain continued. I remember one night it was so bad that my roommate almost took me to the hospital to see what was wrong. During this time, I saw two different otolaryngologists (ear, nose and throat doctors) and they never found anything wrong, not even signs of an ear infection. I went to an audiologist and had a hearing test performed to make sure I wasn’t losing more hearing, and that wasn’t the case either. Nothing wrong was found.
Yet I knew better. I knew myself well that there was something wrong. I couldn’t ignore the pain that I had in my ear seemingly constant, at times more severe than others. I knew the difficulty I was having in hearing. And during this time when no answers were coming as to why from medical doctors, I turned my prayers to Jesus. I asked Him for what purpose this was happening, and why no one was finding anything wrong. I asked Him why I was going through such a thing that didn’t make sense. It was such a journey of asking questions and trying to understand. Through that time I realized my dependence on doctors and people in this world for answers before I turn to Jesus. Instead of letting Him bring answers through various people, I depended on them above all else. I had made idols out of doctors and medicine, and when they weren’t able to “fix” what was wrong, I didn’t know what to do about it.
But He spoke as He always does. I hadn’t been hearing it. God had to remind me of one of the reasons why I have had this hearing loss-so I may hear Him better-through this pain and difficulty with my hearing. I began to listen. And listen. And listen more. I turned my eyes and heart to the Word of God to see what He would say through that as well. And over what would be probably the time period of a month, it all became clear.
Much like the boy born blind, I am the girl born deaf.
We were both born in order that God’s glory may be shown in our lives.
That is through disability, and that is without disability. For with disability, we have the opportunity to rely on Him heavily and see His strength made perfect in our weaknesses. People are able to see what God can overcome. And it is also without disability. Through that, we see the healing power of Jesus to make our infirmities go away. We understand that there is no other who can do this besides Him. And it is through that His strength, mercy and love become incredibly tangible in our own lives and have a ripple effect to others. It is through things such as this that we understand He is the Lord, and there is no other.
I remember the night in which I was up at a church in Denver over spring break and the boy born blind was the sermon for the night, and I remember weeping as I seldom have before. “You would do this, O Lord? You have always used it, but You want to use it more? You wish to take it away? I see now that it has always been for Your glory that I have had this hearing loss, but how I will hold back Your future glory if I choose not to let You heal me…”
I saw clearly that night that He is the one who sees me. He is the one who hears me. And He is the one who wishes to heal me.
That was a turning point. God had spoken, but would I choose to trust? Would I choose to believe? Would I have faith and not fear?
Such has been the lesson over the last year through so many different things. I went from a time last summer having full faith and confidence in God on summer project to a year in which I wrestled with my faith in Him like never before. I learned what it was to fear God to some degree, but then I let that fear paralyze me. I went from these different extremes of being apathetic to so uncertain of so many things though I knew I could never forsake my faith. It was a year in which God stripped me of everything in order to build me back up again solely in Him. It was one of the hardest years I remember. In every aspect of my life and my heart God continued to ask me “do you trust Me?” The question was as simple as that, but the answer was far harder to find. There were things in my heart that God brought to light that I never knew existed before. I saw scars that I didn’t know were there and I had to let God heal them. But above all, I had to trust God in every aspect. Simply trust Him.
I have been reading through the Gospel of Matthew since January. It has been a book that has taken a long time to get through because God has spoken through every aspect of it. It is the Gospel that focuses heavily on the aspect of faith, and how faith is necessary in all things, including divine healings. While the whole book has spoken to me greatly, I wish to include the parable of the mustard seed in Matthew 17:14-21.
When they came to the crowd, a man approached Jesus and knelt before him. "Lord, have mercy on my son," he said. "He has seizures and is suffering greatly. He often falls into the fire or into the water. I brought him to your disciples, but they could not heal him." "O unbelieving and perverse generation," Jesus replied, "how long shall I stay with you? How long shall I put up with you? Bring the boy here to me." Jesus rebuked the demon, and it came out of the boy, and he was healed from that moment. Then the disciples came to Jesus in private and asked, "Why couldn't we drive it out?" He replied, "Because you have so little faith. I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there' and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you."
Over this year I finally understood what the true meaning of this passage was. Many people take the aspect of the mustard seed in relation to faith to be one referring to faith as something quantitative. However, faith is not quantitative. We either believe God or we don’t. We either trust Him or we don’t. There’s so often this middle ground that we allow ourselves to be in thinking “well, I do trust Him with some things, but these, I’m not so sure about.” That’s what I had been doing for far too long. Our faith is to be qualitative, believing God either capable of doing insignificant things or believing him to be capable of doing astounding things. There were so many areas in which I thought I trusted God because I trusted Him a little bit, but really, I didn’t trust Him at all.
This truth revolutionized my faith in making that question simple. I either trust Him or I don’t. It was a choice I had to make over and over again, and still continue to.
I write this before you now saying that I can answer that question today that I fully trust Him. In every aspect of my life He has shown Himself more than worthy of my trust. I understand that my God is for me, not against me.
Countless things have happened in the last month or so. Since the end of the school year in particular, God has been revealing Himself in ways I never would’ve expected.
Even now as I write this, I ask myself the question, “how can I even begin to describe what He’s done?” What He’s done is infinite in every aspect, and I fear that I do God injustice by trying to explain it all. In fact, I do. It is my prayer that He will enlighten your hearts as you read this and account for my lack of ability to describe it all.
As soon as I got home to Colorado from school ending, my family and I headed down to Taos, New Mexico for a family reunion on my dad’s side. We do this biannually, and it has always been a highlight for me. My dad has four brothers and sisters and with that come countless cousins and aunts and uncles for me. I thoroughly enjoy the time I spend with them every time. It is lighthearted and deep at the same time. However, this time around was so different for me. I struggled immensely with communication and comprehension in an arena I used to do so well in. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t remedy the situation, and so with my family I became apathetic to communication with them. I felt isolated in my own silent bubble cast upon me by my hearing loss. With God, however, I became desperate. I cried out to Him that I was incredibly frustrated and grieved at this fact that I was “alone” because of my hearing loss. I remember writing probably a month prior to that time that no one understands me fully but God. No one understands fully what I go through but Him. How true that resonated over those few days.
I realized through that time that I had always been nonchalant about the fact that God is capable and willing to heal me of my hearing loss. I treated it as a matter of “cool, if it happens; if not, that’s cool too.” I remembered all of the accounts of healing I had been reading over the past 6 months in Matthew and how not one of them were nonchalant about it. They recognized their infirmities to the full and also recognized Jesus’ healing power in it all. They cried out to Him and came to Him earnestly, in full faith knowing that in His name and power they were healed. How much I had been lacking in this aspect. For the first time I understood what the meaning of being desperate for the Savior’s healing touch meant.
It meant understanding my full weakness and how apart from God there is no remedy. It meant surrendering my own strength and gaining His. And above all it means asking in earnest for Jesus to be my healer and open up my ears that have been stopped my entire life.
The next step in this past month’s journey came in the form of a conversation with a fellow hard-of-hearing woman at Kate’s (my boyfriend John’s sister) wedding reception. My parents had been sitting at the same table as her throughout the course of the night, and it was the orchestration of God’s hand that made it so. They engaged in conversation I know little about, as I was sitting at a different table for the night. During that time, I got the urging from God that I needed to go talk to my parents and check in with them. I proceeded to do so and they said that they had been having a wonderful conversation with the Grinstead’s friend who has cochlear implants and is also a teacher for the deaf, and asked me if I would talk with her as well. Of course I accepted. I’ve had countless conversations like this over the years, as the community of the deaf/hard-of-hearing is small and somewhat intimate. We are able to understand each other’s common struggles better than those hearing can. I was talking with her and her husband as well as my parents and she was telling me of how she lost her hearing when she was 20 years old, and got a cochlear implant at that time. A few days before the wedding, however, she got a second one. She is also a teacher of the deaf. She spoke of how the cochlear implant has changed her hearing and her life. We talked about many things, and my mom in particular brought up the fact that as a parent of a deaf child, one wants to have all the knowledge in the world in order to make the right decision for his/her child. One wanted to have the right answer. That point seemed reiterated over and over again.
As I remained silent during this time and listened, it was a new realization to me that Jesus is the right answer. He was the answer I kept looking past over and over again. Jesus is the answer.
So often in our culture, especially in America, we make idols out of doctors and take what they say to be the defining answer. We forget to ask God what His answer is. God has appointed and gifted doctors and the medical profession; however, we run the risk of making them the answer and forsaking the One who has blessed them with the knowledge to do what they do. I realized that much like when I first had the pain in my ear, I can’t look to doctors alone for the answer. I must look to Jesus, and if He chooses to bring the answer through a doctor, so be it.
But I must look to Jesus alone.
I think of the boy born blind and how when the Pharisees questioned him for the answer of who was it that caused him to see, he first says that it was the man named Jesus that did so. When asked again, he says that He must be a prophet. When he was asked last, he declares He is the Son of God. He realized that for Jesus to heal Him, He must be God. It was a process of faith I believe in the boy realizing and owning the fact that no ordinary man can do works such as the one He did. It is divine.
Jesus is the answer.
There was an awesome thunderstorm when I was home, one like no other I had seen before. The lightning flashed over the mountains in the midst of this firery sunset. I was attempting to capture pictures of lightning since I had never been able to before. Surprisingly, that wasn’t the point of the night J. I stood out there for a long while watching this storm and seeing the lightning, yet hearing no thunder. It was bizarre, because Colorado has these thunderstorms that rattle the walls of the house. I stood there watching as it began to rain and asked God, “I know it’s the time for healing. Now will You show that through Your thunder?”
The thunder came along with pouring rain and the lightning expanding over all of the visible sky. The storm lasted for 6 hours. A long storm for Colorado Springs, not one I had seen before. I sat in awe for the rest of the night seeing what had happened as I asked in faith. God desired to show Himself to me, and did so in the most amazing way…it was so personal to me because I love these lightning storms so much. I even tried to climb on the roof so I could see it better! John texted me a passage later on that night and I read it the next morning. It spoke this: “Father, bring glory to Your name.’ Then a voice spoke from Heaven, saying, ‘I have already brought it glory, and I will do it again.’ When the crowd heard the voice, some thought it was thunder while others declared an angel had spoken to him. Then Jesus told them, “this voice was for your benefit, not mine” (John 12:28-30). I meditated over this verse throughout the day and realized that God spoke through that thunderstorm in order that I would know that He desires to show His glory and answer prayer. It was for my benefit, in order that my faith would increase.
And since that day, I am able to see God as the God of that thunderstorm…unspeakably beautiful and glorious, willing to give all good gifts.
A process of faith growing happened throughout that week. Many things happened, but I will not speak of them here and now, for there is more to be said…
The last Friday night I was home I went to this college service called the Mill at New Life that I have been to many times before. John was with me that night as well. The Mill is awesome-a great group of people with a great pastor and great worship-or so I was told about the worship part anyways. Honestly, I didn’t like the musical worship part much at all. It was incredibly heavy on the bass and muddled the voices of the vocalists, making it all this one big jumbled noise that I couldn’t decipher anything out of. I usually sat through it and listened, perhaps tried to sing if I could understand it. Usually it was me in silence.
Until that night.
I had been realizing that I listen on my own strength and efforts. It tires me greatly because of it. From lip reading to trying to decipher auditory information, it is a strenuous effort. I am exhausted at the end of each day.
And that night I decided to ask to hear through Jesus’ ears and not my own. His ears are perfect and mine are not. I decided to surrender my own efforts of listening and allow Jesus to make the sound clear to me.
It came slowly at first, when it seemed like the music sounded a bit different. I actually heard a strain or two. I continued to pray. I continued to receive. I received the gift of my ears being opened for a bit of time during the worship in which I heard some of the most beautiful music I have ever heard. I heard every little piece of it, every note from every instrument intertwined with one another making this beautiful composition. I couldn’t move as I was captured by the sound of it and the fact that my ears were unstopped; I could hear clearly. It was through the ears of Jesus that this was possible.
And I began to experience the fact that He desired to make His ears perfect in my own. It was unspeakable.
It was that night that I realized all He had spoken in the past had already begun.
His desire and willingness to heal me was being manifested and would continue to be.
Amazing grace.
How sweet the sound.
How incredibly sweet the sound.
Since that night, the journey continues. My ears have been opened at other times as well, such as when I called upon the elders of the church to pray with me in faith that I will be healed. God continues to teach me incredibly much about Himself and my life with Him. Jesus is showing me His heart and character, and it is through that, not His ability to heal, that He desires to heal me.
He loves me that much.
I have been learning to declare and praise Him in the fact that He is my healer and in Him I am fully healed because I have asked. I have also learned that I must continue to persist in prayer until I see His will manifested here.
I have been learning to have a resolve in trusting Him above all things. When I get scared or begin to doubt with this as well as any aspect of my life, it is because I am taking my eyes off of Him.
His perfect light and perfect love casts out all fear.
And one might ask, “what does all of this mean? How is this to be shown?” I don’t have a definite answer for that. What I continue to believe is who God is, what He’s done, and what He’s spoken through His Word. With that, I believe He has clearly spoken that He is willing to heal me of my hearing loss. And I firmly believe that He will.
It could be in different ways, but I expect nothing less than the greatness of God to be manifested in this.
Yet above all, there is an even greater purpose. God has also been asking me what will be my heart’s response in every circumstance, with or without healing. Will I still praise Him, even if I am afflicted with this hearing loss for the rest of my life? What is my heart towards Him? God cares about our hearts infinitely more than anything else, and if I were to neglect that, I would be missing out on so much…
And through all of this, I find my heart’s response to be one of, “Yes Lord, I will praise You no matter what.” See, I have fallen into a deeper love with my Savior like never before. I am learning so much, and that is sufficient for me. With healing or without healing, still I will praise Him.
I could never fully explain all that has happened in this process. My words will always be inadequate for such things.
I sit still often thinking about how I have gotten to this point. Over and over again, I come back to the fact that it is not me at all. Much like the boy born blind, I did not choose God, but God chose me in order that His glory may be shown.
And I believe the main reason I am writing this is so that God may also ask you:
“What is your heart’s response?”
