Kathy, I am praying that God will send that special touch for your hurting body.

Kathy, you say you want God to reveal a purpose for your twenty years of pain,
severe pain which has cost a fortune.

Well, I can speculate.

You say you have a husband who is with you, and adult children.  Perhaps your
pain is for them, one of them or more, to teach them patience and to bring them
closer to God.

I was sick on and off during all 40 years of my marriage to Irv.  When we started
out, we were both "New Agers", although both of us had individually been followers
of Jesus prior to that.  We became involved in New Age practices trying to find
health for me.  We spent money moving to try to find a better environment for me.
And yes, I spent money on alternate therapies, although I had insurance for
standard medicine, which was not helping.  Although sometimes it seemed things
were improving, really they were not.  I did not even have a proper diagnosis on
which to base treatment or at least understand what was happening.

Throughout this, my husband was patient and loving.  While my parents and son
became disillusioned with my condition, not believing it hardly existed, since doctors
could not name it, Irv was always that patient and loving husband.  When I think
back on that, it was THE greatest thing that happened to me in my life in this world,
apart from salvation.

But to Irv it was great, too.  He said to me several times that I had saved his life.
I guess he meant I saved him from disappointment in love with his first wife, who
was unfaithful;  even saved him from disillusionment.  I gave him something which
he could live for...someone he loved who loved him back, in spite of all the years
of struggle and pain.

Now your situation could be similar, or not, but I think sometimes a person suffering
a longterm illness is doing it to help a spouse, children, or other relatives or friends.
They become the man who lay by the road until the Good Samaritan came by.  I
love very much the story of the Good Samaritan.  The meaning of that story is that
we often find goodness where we were not looking for it, in someone who rises to
the occasion.

Perhaps you are the "occasion" for someone, and that is the meaning of your life
that you are looking for.

Now that my husband is gone to Heaven, I often wonder as you do what the meaning
of MY life is now.  It seems pretty meaningless, but every once in a while I find I am
"there" for someone who needed a word from the Lord.  Like my grandson, at four,
who declared that Grampa was in Heaven and that God was the "boss" up there--
and I was able to tell him it was true.  He claimed no one else told him anything about
Heaven or God.  I just happened to be there to hear what he said and tell him it was
true.  His father told him it was not true, and I was able to tell him that his father and I
did not agree....so maybe I have stuck around in a largely meaningless struggle just
for those few minutes when I could say something like that to someone.

And maybe I still have something to say to someone?  Or something to do for someone?

I know you can't do much, with your long debilitating and painful illness, and I hope very
much that we will soon be finished with our tasks here, and the Lord will take us to a
better place.

In the meanwhile, again, praying for you to be relieved of this burden soon, even here.
And that the rest of your life may be peaceful and no longer a struggle with pain and
misunderstanding, such as that of the doctors who thought you were "drug seeking."