The Way Prayer Holds Me

I want to be honest with you about something. My daily devotional time is not polished. It is not aesthetic. It is not always peaceful. Some mornings I come to God grateful, full of words, ready to pour out everything on my heart. Other mornings I come to God exhausted, with nothing to offer but a sigh and a willingness to show up anyway.

But I show up. Every morning. Because God is my strength. God is my covering. God is where every blessing in my life comes from. God is the reason I am able to carry what I carry.

When people tell me they don’t know how I do it, how I stay steady, how I keep going in the middle of a disease that is unpredictable and relentless, I want you to know the truth.

It is not me.



It is God. God is carrying me. And I mean that with everything in me.

Living with MS means waking up not always knowing how your body will respond. It means MRIs and brain fog and fatigue and the quiet fear that sits in the back of your mind asking what could change next. It means holding uncertainty as a daily companion whether you want to or not.

There is a particular kind of fear that comes with a diagnosis that has no cure.

It is not always loud. Sometimes it is the thought that flickers at 3am when you cannot sleep. Sometimes it is the moment after an appointment when the doctor says nothing has changed and you exhale, but the relief is never quite complete. Because you know that next time the answer might be different. You know that this disease moves on its own timeline, by its own rules, without your permission.

Nobody prepares you for that. For the way uncertainty becomes something you have to learn to live alongside. For the grief of not knowing what your body will look like in five years, ten years, twenty years. For the weight of loving your life deeply while holding the quiet fear that it could look very different someday.

I carry that fear. I will not pretend I do not.

But I do not carry it alone.

God is where I bring the fear I cannot say out loud to anyone else. The fears that feel too heavy, too dark, too what if. God can hold all of it without flinching. Without needing me to soften it or wrap it in hope before I hand it over.

That is where my faith lives. Not in pretending everything is fine. But in trusting that even in the unknown, even in the uncertainty of a body with no guarantee, God is already there. God already knows. And God has not left me yet.

Prayer is where I take all of it.



I put my fear of progression on God. I put my financial concerns on God. I put the weight of family, the future, and every single what-if on God. Not because I am trying to avoid responsibility, but because I have learned that some things are simply too heavy to carry alone. And God never asked me to.

God is my rock. Not metaphorically. Literally. When my thoughts feel unstable, God steadies them. When my body feels unpredictable, God reminds me that my life is anchored in something that does not shift.

There is something deeply humbling about arriving at that truth. About admitting that no amount of discipline, planning, or strength training can substitute for surrender. That even on the days when I feel capable and strong, I still need God. I will always need God.

My devotional time is where I return to that truth every single day.

Some mornings I come to God with a full prayer, pouring out everything on my heart until I feel lighter. Some mornings I journal my fears and physically write the words, God, this is Yours, because I need to see it in front of me. Other mornings I sit in silence and simply thank God for another day in this body. For the fact that I am still here. Still building. Still breathing.

I do not pray for a perfect life. I pray for endurance. I pray for wisdom. I pray for peace when my symptoms feel loud and my mind starts to spiral. I pray for the grace to accept what I cannot control and the clarity to act on what I can.

God does not erase my diagnosis. God strengthens me within it. And that difference has changed everything about how I live.

Before MS, I thought strength meant independence. Doing everything myself. Solving every problem. Holding everything together without asking for help. I thought needing support was weakness.

I know better now.

Strength looks like surrender. It looks like kneeling. It looks like saying, God, I trust You with this body, even when I am scared. Even when the MRI is next week. Even when the brain fog is thick and the fatigue is real and I cannot see past today.

When brain fog clouds my thinking, God gives me clarity in spirit. When anxiety creeps in before a scan, God gives me calm. When the future feels too heavy to look at directly, God reminds me that God already stands in it. I do not have to figure it all out. I just have to trust the one who already has.

Prayer is not my escape from this life. It is my anchor inside of it.

It shifts my focus from what could go wrong to who is in control. It reminds me that I am not navigating this alone. That my life is not defined by lesions or lab results, but by God’s faithfulness over me.

Every blessing I have, every ounce of resilience people see in me, every time I get back up after a hard day, that comes from God. Not from me being exceptional. From God being faithful.



God is my source.

God is my strength when mine runs thin. God is my peace when my mind races at 3am. God is my rock when everything else feels uncertain and the ground beneath me seems to shift.

And every morning I carve out that sacred space, I am reminded of something that carries me through everything else.

Even in a body that changes, I am held by a God who does not.

🧡
Marti

The original article was posted on Substack on April 6, 2026.

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