Questions of Prayer, Healing, Life, and Death

It's Sunday evening. The kids are all in bed. The girls asked if they could sleep together tonight, promising that they really wouldn't talk. This led to a conversation about promising things that they would never follow through on (and telling them that I never expect them to sleep together without talking, just to keep it quiet). I was just upstairs swaddling Thunder Buddy (Daddy's nickname) so he would stop crying and go to sleep, and I heard them whispering to each other in bed. I have so many fond memories of late-night conversations in bed with my sisters. Hearing their quiet giggles makes my heart smile.

I kissed Thunder a little more tenderly after I swaddled him tonight. This evening I've been reading a blog by a mother who lost her little one around the same time that we received our miracle baby. I sobbed as I watched a slideshow of the day her baby was born.

The Lord is so much greater and more beautiful and more terrible and more tender than I can comprehend.

While we are rejoicing over the birth of our little one, another mother is losing hers.

One person is healed and another continues in chronic pain.

He relieves my chronic neck and shoulder pain without any fanfare while I continue to struggle with depression and hypothyroidism.

One night a couple of weeks ago, I prayed for Thunder who was coughing and struggling to sleep through a stuffy nose. At first I was frustrated and complaining, God, why don't you heal him? Then my heart suddenly received the grace to be humble, and I simply lifted him up before the throne of grace, asking God to touch his little body. He immediately went into a peaceful sleep for the rest of the night and only coughed a couple more times over the next day or two.

My Salt Racer endures constant back and neck pain. Visits to the chiropractor helped for a season, but when we trimmed our budget a couple of years ago he stopped going. The pain drains his energy. I pray for him, sometimes with much faith and sometimes with little. One night my heart was filled with such childlike faith. I placed my hands on his neck and lower back and lifted him up to Abba, knowing that my prayers were being heard and that He cared for us and delighted to hear us asking Him for help. I even felt something shifting in his back. He said he felt it too.

Since then, he's had some of his worst days.

I wonder, is it my fault? Am I not praying hard enough or consistently enough? Does God care? Why doesn't He heal my husband? Why doesn't He heal me?

I am afraid I'm becoming like an Israelite in the wilderness--tired and complaining. Forgetting all the miracles God has done for me. Experiencing a little discomfort (or a lot), and suddenly my memory of His goodness becomes very short. I start to question His goodness. What a fickle, unruly heart I have!

Heart, I would teach you to rest in the Lord with the trust of a little child.

On Friday I got the results of a blood test that show my thyroid is still not working right. Had I gotten the results I hoped for, I would be rejoicing. Since I didn't, I am discouraged. This morning, I read this excerpt from a letter by the apostle Paul:

"... we were so utterly and unbearably weighed down and crushed that we despaired even of life [itself]. Indeed, we felt within ourselves that we had received the [very] sentence of death, but that was to keep us from trusting in and depending on ourselves instead of on God Who raises the dead. [For it is He] Who rescued and saved us from such a perilous death, and He will still rescue and save us; in and on Him we have set our hope (our joyful and confident expectation) that He will again deliver us [from danger and destruction and draw us to Himself] ..." (2Corinthians 1:8b-10 AMP).

As I am writing this, my sister-in-law, Beloved Pearl, is watching The Passion of the Christ. Jesus is being beaten and mocked, and Peter is so confused by what is going on that he is denying his Lord. He does not understand the heart of a Father who would love His Son so much and yet allow Him to suffer defeat, discouragement, and death. I am reminded of these words:

"Because you have made the Lord your refuge, and the Most High your dwelling place, there shall no evil befall you, nor any plague or calamity come near your tent. For He will give His angels [especial] charge over you to accompany and defend and preserve you in all your ways [of obedience and service]. They shall bear you up on their hands, lest you dash your foot against a stone" (Psalm 91:9-12 AMP).

These words are so confusing in light of very real circumstances, even the circumstances of Jesus' life, that Satan used them to try to confuse and tempt the Son of God (Luke 4:10). If anyone deserved this level of protection, it was Jesus. Yet He suffered more than any man.

What does that mean, God?

The answer begins here:

"He shall call upon Me, and I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble, I will deliver him and honor him" (Psalm 91:15 AMP).

He does not promise that we would not suffer, but that those who dwell "in the secret place of the Most High" (91:1) shall have no evil befall them. In other words, nothing can happen to them outside of Abba's perfect, loving will. In the case of Jesus, it was the Father's will to crush His Son:

"Yet it was the will of the Lord to bruise Him; He has put Him to grief and made Him sick" (Isa 53:10a AMP).

Jesus is being whipped. Satan is watching, seeming to think that he is winning. God's perfect will is being done. And the Son is submitting willingly. (The scene currently playing from The Passion.)

These are the paradoxes in which we live. Lord, I would like to understand. But more than that, I would like to trust You as did Your Firstborn. He didn't question or complain. He rested in Your love even when You lovingly assigned Him to endure torture and death. He endured everything You asked because He knew Who You Are and Who He Is in You. No circumstance would ever cause Him to become offended or disobedient to You, the only One who is Good.

I, too, am Your child. Help me to rest in You as He did. Help me to trust You no matter what.

No matter what.

No matter what.

Thank You for these struggles that keep me from trusting in myself. Help me to look beyond the present death and despair. For You are the God who raises the dead.