{Morgan and her husband hiking in Montana}
Around the age of fifteen, my cycle became extraordinarily painful. My agony was often dismissed or denigrated as “normal,” and I prayed that it would go away, or I would get stronger, but this condition worsened as I got older. Later in life, I was diagnosed with endometriosis, a disease where the tissue that lines your uterus grows in other areas of your body. In short, this means internal bleeding that causes debilitating abdominal pain every month, as well as a host of other complications and distressing symptoms.
In 2021, as my health started to decline more quickly, I made the difficult decision to leave the corporate world. This was disheartening to me because I grew up believing that I needed to sustain a good-paying job to provide for my family, and I had seen how my parents fought through their own chronic pain in order to do just that. However, I took comfort in the thought, “Maybe God is calling me to the role of housewife.” I resolved that if he wanted this for me, I would excel as a housewife—until my health began to fully incapacitate me.
I tried treatment after treatment, and each one disappointed me with its inability to improve my quality of life. Eventually, I found myself unable to clean or cook as often, spending most of my time stuck on the couch. And I would cry, “Why God? What am I supposed to do now?” I felt the pressure of failing in all my roles and the expectations I had for myself.
But God does not expect me to fulfill all the worldly qualifications of a “perfect” housewife. Despite my failings, he continues to be faithful and to provide everything my family and I need. Rachel Jones, author of A Brief Theology of Periods, wrote this at the end of Chapter 3: “Christian women don’t have to be superheroes who look within and boast in our power; we’re daughters of God who look to Jesus and rejoice in him.” The world encourages us to “empower ourselves,” as if that is ours to control. But I cannot, and trying to do so only shows a lack of faith that God will strengthen me.
God knows that my physical pain makes me weak in faith and prayer. I find myself distracted by pain, relying on God even to remind me to rest in him. But I’ve been meditating on Romans 8:18–30, where in verse 26, Paul says, “Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.” My prayer life has not always been pretty, and can often be just cries of anguish, but the Lord understands me in all my frailty.
In the same passage, Paul discusses the future glory God will bestow upon his adoptive sons and daughters, saying, “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us” (verse 18). That is difficult to reconcile amid pain, but God will redeem my broken body (verse 23), whether it’s on this earth or after I pass. Pain is small compared to the glory of God and how he can work through me. My joy comes from Jesus. I am not heroic because of my struggle with endometriosis; rather, my God is strong and mighty, and only through him can my life be redeemed.
