To my dearly beloved & faithful sisters in Christ,

My name is Angelina Mulyani from Jakarta, Indonesia. As of this year, I have been a disciple for 12 years. I am still single and in my 43^rd level (which usually we call “ages”) of life. I work as an Interior Designer and am passionate about watercolor painting.

I love to share stories about how I am wrestling with God, especially ones from 2019. This was when I was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease that attacks my nerves, muscles, and joints with very sharp pain and, especially when it’s flaring up, makes it difficult for me to move, breathe, and speak. Right now there is no cure for this disease; only medicine to reduce the pain or the intensity of the flare, though the medicine comes with dangerous side effects.

I remember the first attack in 2012. I thought it was just a common nerve pain. Especially, since 2002, I’d frequently had very bad migraines and pain in my neck and back that kept me going to the neurologist. Consuming pain killers/medicine for my nerves had become my lifestyle. But this disease was—and remains—uncommon. Even the doctors at that time did not fully understand the symptoms.

All the people around me are unfamiliar with this pain. They undermine my pain, viewing me as a continuously sick person, and just advise me to not think about or feel it too much. This made me more frustrated.

So I tried to deny my sickness and chose to “be strong” by acknowledging only my achievements in my career and business. I kept my life active and productive by working out. I relied on medical treatments (I visited almost all of the neurologists in Jakarta). Even after I became a disciple in 2009, I still maintained this lifestyle. But as time went by, the physical pain kept getting worst, and the issues that I had buried were starting to pile up.

The root of this pain primarily came from a mental health issue called an “unresolved case of our past life.” This can include things such as traumatic cases, struggle, disappointment, bitterness, and emotional hurt that were not healed or dealt with properly.

My unresolved past life includes my struggle with insecurities about my face and how I looked (I had bad pimples from my teen years to university) and being raised in a financially difficult and disharmonious family, which caused me to have trauma in my relationships with men. From my point of view, man is created to be unfaithful beings that are only interested in a beautiful woman. As I grew up, being gorgeous became my main concern. Mentally, I pushed myself to be strong and to stand on my own feet without having to count on a man; yet, on the other side, I longed for a father figure and a love, a connection, or an attachment with a man. But in my past relationships with men, I experienced a similar pattern. A few times, I fell for men whose characters traumatized me and made my life more broken and painful.

I come from a tough background, starting from zero and having to work hard to challenge what I thought was my fate. Eventually, I moved to Jakarta, where I studied at a university and later found work. My oldest sister and I share the responsibility of supporting our parents and youngest brother. I’ll admit it— we are “ parenting parents.” I have a sincere and joyful heart when it comes to supporting them. But, being single, I was overwhelmed at taking up the part and duty of a father and mother and felt emotionally drained with my parents, who were getting older and beginning to return to a “child” state, and my youngest brother. But I didn’t allow myself to process my feelings or my personal needs, because I thought it would hurt and make me weak.

I was disappointed and started to be angry with God at 27, when I realized all of my friends had found the love of their lives through “marriage and/or having kids.” Meanwhile, I had become the last standing single. I stopped praying about a spouse, as the more I prayed, the more hopeless and weak I felt.

At 29, when I started my own company, I turned my focus toward and poured out all my disappointment about a spouse into my business. I decided that, if I have to be single, I wouldn’t cry; I would keep my head up, be strong, impactful, successful, and have a joyful life. But I built my future with the wrong foundation, driven by insecurity. And once it was all accomplished, indeed, I did not enjoy all my achievements and I found myself drawn into the deep black hole of emptiness. It was pathetic and miserable.

My main issue, that remained unresolved until 2019, was my bitterness and hurt in my relationship with a man. I was lonely, craving for love and attachment, and also depressed, hopeless that I would have a spouse. I wished to find a genuine connection with a companion with whom I could share the good and bad times, have for the rest of my lifetime, that I could team up with as we contributed to God’s kingdom, and with whom I knew we could have an impact on one another with our gifts and talents as we go hand in hand to Zion. Ultimately, I wanted a man with a father-figure-worthy character and whose life was rooted in Christ. But, as time went by, those wishes flew so far away.

From the outside, people view me as a successful woman. I have my own Interior Design company. I have the heart to help others, especially with art education for the unfortunate children. I made an art help program, a charity with art media, about my outlooks. I can confidently say I think I look younger than my age, that I have no more issues with skin dermatitis on my face, that I am stylish, on-trend, cheerful, talented, and have an artsy soul.

My spiritual health, in terms of participating in spiritual works and disciple activities, is going great! I am giving, and I willingly obey and follow because I know it is the truth. I am proud to have become a disciple.

Yet, inside, I feel empty, lonely, hurt, broken, and angry with life. Every day is made unpeaceful by things like rush hour and just being generally exhausted. And the pureness of my connection with God has become corrupted. I am numb. I have had moments where I thought that God will save and love everyone else in the world but me. That He doesn’t have empathy for my personal needs. That our only connection was in sharing the good news to others and supporting kingdom works. Yet again, I saw it as a responsibility.

Whether “consciously or unconsciously,” I had all of the pain, bitterness, and brokenness contained with a beautiful wrapping called “success, achievements, and fabulous looks.”

These kinds of feelings, to be honest, feels like the thorn in my flesh because I know that the blueprint He originally created for me does not involve me being like that. I have been in love with God since I was a little girl, when Jesus was able to captivate my heart even though I had been raised by unbelieving parents within my Catholic school.

When I think back on who Jesus is for me, I remember that He is my playmate, my bestie, my brother, my teacher, my counselor, my partner to discuss. In Him I found God the Father, with whom I have had a real and raw connection, even before I became a disciple. That used to be my relationship with Jesus until I was 27 and I felt like I had started to anger and disappoint God.

The autoimmune pain changed my life. It isn’t a deadly disease, but when the pain is so intense, the only thing I can wish for is to die. I became angry and insecure with fellow disciples and my friends. I was afraid to make appointments with them, as the physical pain can come suddenly and remains so constant that I frequently have to cancel the appointment. It’s really stressful for me.

I am traumatized. I remember joining church activities while holding in the pain and feeling exhausted. I felt insecure and would pull out myself from fellowship and church activities.

I separated myself, even though the disciple life requires active fellowship, allowing my trauma to make the church and the community an unsafe place for me.

For almost a year and a half I did not attend discipling groups or other church activities, though I still attend Sunday services and midweek group bible talk. But even in the darkest times, there was still a divine voice deep in my soul that said that God has a purpose from this pain. I could still feel an invisible power that embraced my soul and held me even when I was in pain and found it difficult to connect with God. In my spiritual depression, I wrestled and cried to God, “ Why are You doing this to my life Lord? You haven’t empathized with my needs in singleness and I’ve accepted that, although in bitterness. But now You have given me another new hell with this disease.” I remember I crawled on the floor holding the bible and screaming and crying, “Lord please help me!” Then, I remembered one of my favorite scriptures, Psalm 73:22-23: “I was senseless and ignorant; I was a brute beast before you. Yet I am always with You; You hold me by my right hand.”

I was in a condition where my body, brain, soul were stuck in pain and I had no spirit to live. Frustrated and depressed, it seemed that all of my life had suddenly stopped functioning.

Through a long and tough journey wrestling with God, I found out that He wants me to “be still and know [that] He is God,” the God who loves me, who has empathy for me. The God who is my Father, my bestie, my wonderful counselor, my provider, my healer, my protector, my shepherd, my savior, my all in all.

He made me helpless under His powerful and loving hands. He asks me to surrender my worries because He cares for me (1 Peter 5:6-7). And it’s there, in His hands, that I feel the warmth of His love, as I feel I have finally found the shepherd of my soul ( 1 Peter 2:25 ).

I no longer see the bible as a letter of commands but as a letter of love and guidance from God to me, for we are guided by His Words. I am beginning to reconcile with God, though it’s not easy, as the process means releasing painful physical and emotional pain. But His mercy triumphs over judgment (James 2:13), proven by His willingness to wrestle with and not give up on me.

I am starting to have a gentle heart and feel secure enough to share my feelings and needs with Him. I have said “Lord, I am willing to live, but I cannot bear the pain like this. Please give me a reason and help me to stand with this disease and still have peace with it.”

This prayer needs a moving-mountains faith, my dearest sisters, as, when the flare comes, it takes my sanity and I worry I could forget about my conviction. But I pray to God, “When it happens, please help me to remember that You hold my hand and Your intention is not to hurt me.”

The unanswered prayer is God wanting me to persevere with the right attitude of faith. And it is this process that will make me perfect and not lacking in anything, regardless of whether my prayer is answered or not, as it says in James 5:11. For, as you know, we count as blessed those who preserved. Within the hard times is a moment I can wrestle with Him through His words, that I can feel His power and protection through faith until the coming of the salvation that will be ready to be revealed in the last time (1 Peter 1:5).

Being real with God is changing how I respond when the flare comes. When the intense pain rises, I embrace the pain instead of bracing against it by being still, resting, and meditating as in Isaiah 30:15 (“In quietness and trust is your strength”) and Psalm 46:10 (“Be still and know that I am The God”). I have used this pain as a mirror to self-reflect on what else God wants me to see clearly about myself and what in my character that He wants to shape. God in the process of healing me through the pain sounds “weird for common people,” but indeed, I have got the insight from Romans 8:28: “God works for the good in all things.” ALL THINGS meaning literally in “all things.” In times of trouble, in a difficult life, in the unanswered prayer(s), in hurtful moments, or even in great pain, He keeps on working in a way we cannot understand.

He is the designer of our life and He has a master plan for each one of us, as said in Jeremiah 29:11: “For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”

I’ve learned not to limit or doubt, to see how He does His works, and not to adjust His great power with my bitterness and life challenges.

Now I am confident and joyful in fellowship with my brothers and sisters. As an autoimmune survivor, I no longer avoid them, but am open with them about my “new normal body condition.” Being truthful to the body of Christ is very important, as they are a soil where I can grow and be faithful until the end, with a joyful heart in the Lord and one another.

I love to share how God uniquely sent a message for me through a gift from my client: a Rice Painting of a shepherd. It helps my mind find the way back to who He is for me and who am I for Him.