Health. [God's priorities]

Getting sick in Haiti and everything that happened to my team along with the fact that as far as I know I still have cancer in my body led me to really ponder the meaning of health.

Which is a greater priority to God--the state of our physical bodies or the state of our hearts and minds?
In our culture it seems like we value physical comfort far above most other things.
However, my experience has reminded me that the physical state of my body is not what is most important.
When I first was diagnosed with cancer, I and many other people pleaded with God to heal me.
Sitting here a year and a half later still with cancer would make many people think that God has yet to answer our prayers.
He must not be paying attention or want to heal me, right?
I am convinced that this is definitely not the case. Although He has yet to heal my physical body, I know that He has been working on something much bigger and better than I could possibly ask for in my limited perspective.
His way of healing me has been to heal my heart and free me from the anxiety and depression I have walked with for far too long.
He is making me new.
He is setting me free.
He is healing me.
It was in the midst of completing a task out of obedience (DTS) that I learned this.

I was lying on a cot in the middle of the Haitian countryside, sick with a fever that had reached over 102 degrees. The room I had lived in for two weeks was also the home of cockroaches, countless mosquitoes, a family of mice that ate through my stuff, a scorpion that I found on my bed one day, and a family of birds that enjoyed squawking in the wee hours of the morning and making a mess on our beds with their nest building and incontinence. Needless to say, the conditions of my body and my surroundings were less than ideal.

However, I wouldn't trade that experience for the world. As I lay on my cot soaked in a mixture of sweat and the melted ice that was used to cool me down, I found myself filled with  joy like scarcely before. Laughter began to flow and I could not contain myself.
I felt so free and so content.
I was in a place that I had come to love with people I had come to adore, and I had the Spirit of Christ within  me.
Nothing else mattered.
It's a funny thing to think of what it took for me to experience that kind of peace but it's just proof that physical conditions and health are not what are most important.
From where I stand right now, I would do anything out of obedience to God and suffer any amount of physical discomfort and pain in order to feel that kind of freedom deep in my soul.
After all, that's what He promised us, isn't it?
Physical discomfort: "In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world." (John 16:33)
Deep and satisfying joy: "...I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full." (John 10:10)