Journal Entries
FOUR WALLS
By Trish
These four walls have seen more of me than anyone else ever has.
On the outside, they’re just walls the same paint, the same pictures, the same corners I’ve rearranged a thousand times hoping it might make the inside of me feel different. But on the inside, they hold the weight of what chronic illness does to a soul.
Idiopathic chronic pancreatitis. Pelvic congestion syndrome. Hypothyroidism. PTSD.
Names that sound clinical, distant, abstract.
But behind these words are pain, exhaustion, fear, and the kind of loneliness people don’t see because I don’t “look sick.”
Most days, I sit here staring at these four walls, wondering if the world outside them even remembers I exist. If these walls could talk, they’d tell you the truth: I’ve been fighting for months on a liquid diet, losing track of time, losing pieces of myself, praying for strength I can’t manufacture on my own.
Movement knocks me down.
Eating knocks me down.
And somehow, I’m still expected to keep getting up.
People look at me and say, “You’re so religious now.” But the truth is I always was. I grew up in church, but as a child you only know the motions, not the meaning. It wasn’t until 2016 that I picked up the Bible in the King James Version and tried to understand God’s voice for the first time. I didn’t understand a word of it. I didn’t understand Him yet, or myself.
I was spiritually an infant, thirsty for guidance in a world that only offered noise. And in the most painful season of my life, I fell into a relationship that claimed the name Christian but didn’t carry the heart of Christ. Instead of being discipled, I was dismissed. Instead of being guided, I was drained. Instead of being led to the cross, I was pulled from it.
So I fell away.
And I wandered through years of being in a world I never felt part of not because I’m better than anyone, but because I’ve always been the kind of soul who doesn’t blend in. I’ve never had a hundred friends. I’ve never belonged to a crowd. I’ve always just had my children, my grandchildren, and the hope that unconditional love is real, even though I’ve rarely felt it.
Chronic illness teaches you the difference. People love you when you look strong. They disappear when you don’t.
Doctors judged me before they treated me assuming alcohol or gallbladder when neither has ever been part of my story. I was running miles a day, getting back in shape, declaring that 2025 would be my year. And then flare.
My longest flare.
My hardest flare.
I asked God, Why now?
Why when I was finally back in church?
Why when I finally had a Bible I was excited to open again?
Why when I found a church community that felt safe, nurturing, and holy?
But the flare didn’t stop.
Two weeks became three.
Three became four.
Sixty days became seventy.
The ER shrugged at me and sent me home at the same level eight pain I walked in with.
I cried.
I prayed.
I tried to bargain.
I tried to understand.
And then something inside whispered, You are grieving your old life.
And I knew it was true.
I’m grieving the body I used to live in. The energy I used to have.
The movement I took for granted.
The routine of church I miss desperately. The woman I used to be before pain was my shadow.
I’ve fallen behind on challenges, blog posts, goals not because I lost discipline, but because I lost the version of myself that could push through pain that wasn’t this loud, this constant, this consuming.
I’ve tried to find work outside the home and faced rejection after rejection. Interviews with hundreds of people competing for the same job. No call backs. No opportunities. And now even that feels impossible, because one flare can end employment immediately.
And yet, here in these four walls, something remains.
Something sacred.
Something unbreakable.
I pray.
I worship.
I talk to God as if He’s sitting right here beside me.
Because He is.
People think faith grows in pews.
But sometimes faith grows in hospital rooms, on bathroom floors, in the stillness of pain that refuses to loosen its grip.
I pray for healing.
For financial provision.
For love that can hold the weight of my reality.
For companionship.
For purpose.
For a life beyond these four walls.
But until that day comes
I’m learning to make peace with the stillness. I’m learning to see God in the places I feel most trapped.
I’m learning that these four walls are not my prison they are my sanctuary, the place where God is shaping me slowly, painfully, lovingly.
Because Emmanuel means God with us. And right now, He is with me here
in these
same
four
walls.