My sister, Evangeline, coined the term Job-maxxing to describe how she felt after suffering a series of physical, emotional, and financial stressors.

Unlike Job, Evangeline didn’t literally sit in ashes and scrape herself with a potsherd. She was on the ground metaphorically, though.

I feel Evangeline’s pain. We share an autoimmune disease that fuses our vertebrae and sacroiliac joints, causing pain, decreased mobility, and increased exposure to infections along the way. And psoriasis often tags along for fun.

But wait, there’s more!

Two years ago on Memorial Day, I was hospitalized for rapid dehydration and acute kidney injury. Over the next year, I was hospitalized three more times for the same problems. My gastroenterologist ticked down a long list of symptoms until she arrived at cancer.

More precisely, the doctor diagnosed a neuroendocrinal tumor that metastasized from my pancreas to several lymph nodes and a large mass on my brain. The tumor occluded one of the veins that supplies blood to my head. Thankfully, it grew so slowly that my brain developed an alternative vein system to compensate!

Think about that. God made our bodies so marvelously they adapt to challenges we didn’t even know existed.

In addition, God gave us minds that can design therapies to slow fusion, calm inflammation, soothe itching skin, arrest cancerous growth, and send photons through bad brain cells without damaging good ones.

We can take Job-maxxing in stride because Jesus is coming soon, and His reward is with Him.

Still — and running the risk of sounding ungrateful — I’d like to be healed. I know God can do it.

When Grandpa was a missionary in Northern Asia, tribesmen poisoned him with a dose sufficient to kill 10 men. In agony, he broke his watch so Grandma could know when he died. At that moment, the Spirit awakened Grandma to intercede for Grandpa. She did, and he lived four more decades.

My aunt was very nearsighted during her childhood and teenage years. While praying at the altar during chapel in Bible school, she had a vision of blood pouring from the Cross over her face. She thought she was wiping blood from her eyes. In reality, my aunt had thrown her glasses across the platform. She didn’t need them anymore.

As a Pentecostal, I believe in healing. I never believed so fervently for healing as I have the last two years, however. I don’t remember going to the altar for prayer more than I have since my Memorial Day hospitalization.

But I am not healed. Not yet. Not supernaturally, anyway.

I’m still sitting on the ground with Job and Evangeline and the vast fellowship of sufferers wondering what to do.

Three passages from Job help me.

The first, Job 1:21, deals with attitude. Job says, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will depart. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; may the name of the Lord be praised.”

If you brought nothing with you at birth, and will take nothing with you at death, then whatever you have in between is a blessing, and whatever you don’t have isn’t a loss.

That’s easy to say but difficult to mean. It’s a long, hard slog from initial hurt to final hallelujah. Yet it’s a journey all believers must make sooner or later. The right attitude gets you halfway there.

The second passage, Job 2:13, deals with relationships. “Then they sat on the ground with him for seven days and seven nights. No one said a word to him, because they saw how great his suffering was.”

“They” refers to Job’s friends: Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar. Later, those three become notorious for giving 30 chapters of bad advice to Job. So bad, in fact, God himself said to Eliphaz, “I am angry with you and your two friends, because you have not spoken the truth about me, as my servant Job has” (42:7).

But in 2:13, they sat quietly on the ashes in solidarity with their friend. In the fellowship of sufferers, being present matters more than offering advice. So take a seat and grab a potsherd!

The third passage, Job 42:10, deals with hope. It says of Job, “The Lord restored his fortunes and gave him twice as much as he had before.”

Suffering tries our faith in God, but faith grows when we remember God “rewards those who earnestly seek him” (Hebrews 11:6). Even Jesus endured the Cross “for the joy set before him” (12:2). And because Jesus endured, “Death has been swallowed up in victory” (1 Corinthians 15:54).

Restoration did happen for Job in this age and may happen for us too. But if not now, it will happen in the age to come. The timing of our restoration is always less important than the certainty it will happen.

Thus, we can take Job-maxxing in stride because Jesus is coming soon, and His reward is with Him (Revelation 22:12).