Please keep The Anchoress in your prayers. She has found out that she is losing her hearing. This is in addition to suffering from other ailments including Lyme Disease, a battle with skin cancer and anemia, and sometimes having to use a cane to walk — at age 46.

I can never understand the pain that she suffers but I can share with her the suffering that all humans bear to one extent or another. I, too, have been battling a disease for 21 years. Now is a good time for me but much of the past 4 years was more than I could bear. I have other problems, too, and have had 3 surgeries plus a hospital stay over the past year for a congenital stricture of the urethra outside of my bladder.

About 2 years ago I cried out to God and asked him to either heal me or kill me. At the time I had rather hoped that he would choose the latter option. He has chosen to keep me here though and my wife, Eva, says that part of my mission as a person and as a writer is to give encouragement to others in the depths of illness.

Fine mission that is. Why couldn’t God’s purpose for my life be something like using a $5 billion personal for charity instead? Why does life have to be so hard?

It still bothers me that God has worked many miracles in my life but still refuses to work the Big Miracle that I’ve prayed for over 2 decades. I pray for others and they experience healing while I pray for this one thing in my life and get only silence in return.

In my case, perhaps the miracle is that God has chosen to use me to help those who suffer as only one who understands suffering can. There will be plenty of time in eternity to enjoy a body that works as its supposed to.

Pray for The Anchoress that God would be with her during her suffering.