“Bless the Lord, O my soul and forget none of His benefits, who pardons all your iniquities, who heals all your diseases; who redeems your life from the pit, who crowns you with lovingkindness; compassion; who satisfies your years with good things SO THAT your youth is renewed like the eagle.” – Psalm 103:1-5
I responded to this passage as a prayer to the Lord a few weeks ago. I chose to keep it a prayer here that you would see what it looks like to lament. To truly bring your pain to Him and allow Him to meet you in the wrestling. For He wants us to wrestle WITH and not against Him. This is how we know Him rightly.
Lord,
You heal ALL our diseases? There is a prick in my heart as I read that. Tears surface easily. Bitterness a slow rising in my soul. But you didn’t heal Dasah. You didn’t heal Sophie. Where is this anger coming from? This gigantic question I have of your promise for healing and what that means when you heal there and not here. At the heart I know, is this feeling of being unseen by you, abandoned by you in my greatest desire. The first words out of my mouth when Dasah was born tells the story…”He didn’t heal her.” I just thought you would Lord. My expectation was your glory made manifest through a miraculous healing. You could have. It wasn’t faith I was lacking. It was perspective. It was a hope though I know placed in you, placed also in your healing power. What does it look like then to walk in confidence of what you can do and yet relinquish those hopes to a surrender to what you will do?
In a strange way, I’m ok with the fact that you didn’t heal Sophie. I understand that your wisdom, your ways, were higher. But I’m still not okay that you didn’t heal Dasah. And perhaps more so, I’m not okay that you allowed this to happen twice. It doesn’t make sense. Sorrow upon sorrow. Death upon death. What is it for? “For your glory“, a still small voice rises inside of me and yet somehow that feels dissatisfying, impersonal…. yes, you cared for us IN the pain, but I wanted you to take AWAY the pain. I wanted you to show your power to the nurses and doctors. I wanted you to come in might and power. A sting as I write. For I think of how the Israelites wanted you to come. To take back the kingdom. To show yourself as KING in an empirical, aggressive way. But you came as a BABY, a humble servant of the people. You came to take back your kingdom a different way. Through death. Death that would bring life. YOUR death that would bring life so that we can live in your kingdom and live in this broken world with power and strength, revealing your glory through faithfulness in suffering. For if people are to know you, to know how to walk with you in this life, we must know how to be faithful in suffering. We must learn obedience just as you did… through the things we suffer. This is the way. But I resist the way, just as the Israelites resisted that you could possibly be the King they had been waiting for. You come and defy our expectations. And it is our expectation of how your power will show itself that solicits deep disappointment and pain for we do not understand the glory of your ways. Jesus, truly all my questions seem to be stilled in you. For you came and you are coming again, and it won’t be the way we think. It will be better.
- A Time to be Silent and a Time to Speak - October 29, 2020
- Teaching Them to Hope, Birthday After Birthday. - January 15, 2020
- A Taste of Hope Fulfilled – Briella Dawn’s Birth Story - August 3, 2018
