‘My knees are shot,’ I explained to my shamefully fit friend.
‘You need to do more squats,’ she shot back.
‘I can’t.’
‘Well,’ she said after a lengthy pause, ‘that’s a problem.’
Yes, it is. Arthritis in my knees in my forties is a significant problem. Especially when I’ve also got back problems and everyone on the planet urges me to ‘bend with your knees.’
And it’s one of the many ways I feel different from others.
Difference is lonelifying. I feel it in the face of my fit friends, some much older than me, who can squat with grace and ease, not to mention run marathons. I feel it in the recommendations of health professionals who have no idea how much pain I’m tolerating every minute of the day. I feel it reading those online memes that urge me to ‘seize the day.’
I’m chronically sick. My seizing capacity is limited, thank you.
I’m chronically sick. My seizing capacity is limited, thank you.
I feel as though I am constantly comparing myself to the healthy majority of the population who don’t understand chronic illness—unless they’ve lived with it. Talking to someone who gets it can be incredibly helpful. But most people look at me with confused, vacant, deer-in-headlights expressions when I explain that I’m never going to get better (no matter how much yoga I do).
This loneliness is amplified around childless people, when I remember how illness forced me to make a decision I never wanted to make: to be childless.
It’s heightened around Christians who insist on praying for healing, when I believe God has actually told me I won’t be healed. (It’s the ‘chronic’ part).
Loneliness gets louder when I’m faced with climbing a flight of stairs—and no lift.
It’s worse when illness is invisible and ‘you don’t look sick.’
I feel even lonelier when people throw unsolicited advice my way about how to heal myself, usually through natural remedies, faith or swallowing silver (yes, that last one really happened to me).
That’s why solidarity is so important. And it’s why I was so thrilled during a recent radio interview when a bunch of people called in to and texted the show, sharing their lived experiences of chronic illness. It threw my angst into sharp relief. I hope it did the same for them.
There was Wayne, who has experienced powerful answers to prayer; Rodney, whose father died by suicide, and whose church didn’t know how to handle it; Adam, who recently experienced some breakthrough via natural remedies, and says the church can be good at religious activities but not always at the pastoral ones; Graham, who found relief through natural health cures and remedies; Philippa, struggling with chronic fatigue and invisible illness, whose confidence has suffered as a result; Michael, whose friend uses a wheelchair and experiences ‘ambush prayer’ at church because of it; and Stephanie, who lives with Hashimoto’s and the complications that brings. (Apologies to anyone whose name I have misspelled.)
We are richified and reassured by such stories, reminded that we are not alone, even in the lonelification of chronic illness. We do not have to endure these challenges alone.
You are not alone.
Have you shared your chronic illness story with others who have similar stories? How helpful is the sharing for you? What difference, if any, does it make to remember you are not alone? Share your story. Let’s have a countercultural conversation.
For the full interview with Vision Christian Radio, click here: https://omny.fm/shows/20twenty/does-the-church-isolate-people-with-chronic-illness-steph-penny-christian-author-31-jul-2025