These days I grab the closest leggings and crewneck, pull my hair into a ponytail and call it a day. I’m finally learning to embrace my makeup-free face (and my skin can’t thank me enough) so I can use my precious energy resources on popping bread in the toaster and sitting down next to our east-facing glass doors with my Bible, notebook, and the pile of 7 books I’m idealistically “reading” currently. I wish I could say it was at the crack of dawn as I watch the sun rise (you know, the sacred hour when good Christians have their quiet times), but we’re lucky if it’s not yet double digits.
The patterns and routines (which have never been my thing) are all at the mercy of how my body decides to treat me, so who knows what this day will hold? Dear Lord, bless my sweet husband who is constantly rolling with the tide of ever-changing plans.
But we treasure the hours when I’m feeling good. They are so sweet. We decided that if the situation is not changing, then we need to change how we view and interact with our situation. Sometimes that means playing Uno and laughing (hysterically or maniacally) while one of us plays the switch hands card when the other is about to go out. Sometimes that means using the precious hours I’m feeling good to dress up and get dinner like the old days. Sometimes it means decorating the barf bucket with Monsters Inc. quotes to bring a little joy to those middle of the night cookie tosses.
It’s been six months now of unknowns and life at the whim of my health. And for anyone who has gone through a similar season, you know that it starts to really wear on you. The questions that you’re afraid of asking and have kept at bay inch nearer with every change of the tide, sometimes sweeping over the sandbag barriers you’d so painstakingly built.
Will things ever change, or is this our life forever?
God, do you actually hear and see us? And if you do, why aren’t you changing things?
Is there a lesson you’re trying to teach us that we’re totally missing?
And if this is all just to teach us a lesson, are you sure it’s worth it? Wasn’t there another way you could have taught us?
Are you actually for us? Because we’ve seen you heal and do miracles for others…why not us, why not now?
On my hopeful days, I enjoy getting to listen to God and pray for others. Often I feel like he shows me what he’s up to and how I can join in prayer for them or encourage them. Faith seems so easy when it’s on behalf of others. The other day I was praying Psalm 27 for someone, these words that I’ve loved for years —
“I believe that I shall look upon the
goodness of the Lord
in the land of the living!
Wait for the Lord;
be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord!”
And it was easy to pray them and believe them for this friend. The Lord is moving! You need only to be still and wait for him! Be courageous in believing that you will see his mighty hand!
But for me?
We’ve been waiting, Lord.
When our hearts try to take courage, it feels terrifying. Because we’re so afraid that you’ll disappoint us. That you’ll answer this for others but not for us. Are you sure all we’re supposed to do is wait? Because it doesn’t seem like you’re moving, so maybe we should. Maybe we’re on our own for this one — maybe you’re trying to teach us how to care for ourselves. Or maybe I’m not actually that sick compared to others — maybe you’re trying to help me see the need of the world more, because sheesh, the world is a wreck and far more in need of you than I am. Yes, actually, please go save the world instead. I’ll be fine. My pain is nothing compared to what’s happening in Haiti and Israel and Gaza and Sudan and (the list could quite literally go on and on…)
You don’t make light of any of those. But at the same time, somehow, neither do you make light of my pain. Every time, you tenderly remind me (often through the voice of someone who loves me) that I am your dearly beloved daughter. My pain breaks your heart, just as the pain of a child breaks her parents’ heart. I remember the feeling of being in my mom’s arms every time I got hurt, as she would hold me and sing to me “it’s ok to cry” and tell me she wished she could take my pain and go through it herself instead of watching me suffer.
You really do reveal your heart through others, don’t you?
Selah.
I pause and you bring to mind moment after moment, person after person, where your heart of tender compassion, fierce love, and mother-bear protection was revealed to me.
Your heart has not changed.
So, dear tender and fierce-hearted God, would you reveal your heart to me again, in this season? What does it mean to hope right now? Perhaps it is not that you have disappointed our hopes, but that we have been hoping in the wrong thing. We have been hoping in a specific outcome, a specific change. We have been hoping for you to do something, rather than hoping for you.
Maybe the healing we really need is for you to heal the way we see you. To have you spit in the dust and rub it on our eyes so we can see all the ways you’ve revealed your heart to us through those around us.
Maybe the healing we need is to see that you’re ok with us asking the really hard questions — in fact, you invite them. To meet with you like Nicodemus, realizing that when we ask you these questions we’re actually drawing close to you and crying out for you to give us faith, rather than trying to white knuckle our way into believing the platitudes and right answers we’ve known in our heads our whole lives.
Maybe the healing we need is for you to convince our hearts that you actually care about us, even in the smallness of our problem compared to the bigness of the problems of the world. To see our seemingly insignificant stories in the grand story of the Israelites, who called out to you night and day and saw you deliver them with a mighty hand and outstretched arm. After all, we have been in-grafted into the lives of these ancestors.
So, faithful Lord, we wait for you.
Our strength is failing, so we fall into you.
We gather all the courage we have and scoop up this vulnerable little seed of hope, and place it in your hands — messy with dirt and all.
We are waiting for you.
If you’re interested in coming on this journey with me, consider discussing or reflecting on some of these questions I’ve been pondering…
How has God been revealing his heart to you through those around you?
What are some of the questions you’ve been scared to ask God? What’s keeping you from asking them? How do you think God would respond?
What have you been hoping in? What would it look like to courageously hope in God?