There is a strange tension in waiting.
Whether you are waiting for healing, for a specific opportunity, a vacation, or the next “thing,” waiting isn’t easy. Sometimes, there are somewhat vague destinations in the distant future that you are waiting for, and other times, there are things that are eminent. Things that you feel are urgent. These are the times that we “watch the clock,” or count the days, the hours. Things tend to move a whole lot slower when we are aware of each minute as it passes.
Often when things feel altogether too still from our perspective, there is movement under the surface.
When things are normal, free and easy, we aren’t changing. We aren’t having to figure things out, examine ourselves and our motives; we don’t feel an urgent need to pray. Thankfully, it seems that God gives us those free and easy seasons in between the periods of waiting. If we’re lucky, we can become aware of the things He teaches us in both the in-between times as well as the tension-filled times.
Waiting for healing is hard. Whether it is for physical healing or emotional healing, it takes time. One of the hardest parts about it is you have no idea how long it will take to get there, or what the healing will look like. As a child of the one true healer, we know that full, complete healing will come in time. On this side of heaven, though, we want to be whole. He’s given us a longing for what is good, for the things that bring life, renewal, restoration. Especially when suffering is getting in the way of our own healing or the healing of someone we love with our whole hearts.
It seems lately that everywhere I turn, someone is facing a new attack on wholeness and goodness. Whether it is cancer or some other diagnosis, a child who is sick, relationships that are broken, or a family who is experiencing loss. Christmas certainly magnifies these broken pieces and makes them that much more apparent.
Our family has grappled with what it looks like to stare an ugly disease like cancer in the face and figure out how to both fight it and wait with hope for the healer to rescue. We know that our God is capable. He could merely speak words into the air and a mountain would fall into the ocean, or a new galaxy could come into being. He is all-powerful and omnipotent. At the same time, he is acquainted with our most intricate needs.
Even still, not knowing what the next minute, the next day, or the next year holds is just hard.
When your dad, the guy who according to you and so many others has ‘hung the moon,’ is facing the unknowns of an aggressive disease like linitis plastica stomach cancer, it makes you want to stare at the clock and ask a hundred and one times for God to go ahead and swoop in.
In a few weeks, he will have another set of scans in Houston. He has one more round of chemo-therapy after Christmas, and from there, he steps into the unknown once again. Our God never promised this life would be easy. But He promised He’d be right there with us the entire way. In fact, a life lived fully reliant on Him is the greatest gift He can give us. And while we pray for physical healing, we are reminded of all of the ways He has already worked miracles in our midst, and how He has already given my dad the intangible gift of a life lived fully and wholly dependent on Him. While the enemy has repeatedly tried to diminish his health, our valiant Father has been renewing him in the places where it matters MOST. Our physical bodies are so temporary. Our souls, what we do, and how we leave a legacy for others on this earth is so much more powerful than longevity, material possessions, or comfort.
While we understand these things, we still pray fervently for renewal inside of his body so that his work on this earth can continue for as long as possible. While God always wins, our prayers still matter.
Disease is evidence of a broken world that is in need of a rescuer. I think this is why we feel such a tension in these times of unknown. It is not supposed to be this way. So we pray against the sickness, darkness and disease that the enemy intends for evil and pray for light to permeate every minutia of his body, from the tip of his head to the ends of his toes.
Tonight, as I found myself on my knees on our kitchen floor, praying for the wholeness of our family, I was reminded of another time that I prayed a similar prayer, back on the floor of our old kitchen in Franklin, Tennessee.
I had no idea how or when we would start a family, and was navigating some of my own unknowns with my health. I asked him simply, for help. Soon after, I got assurance from a doctor in town and we became pregnant with Caleb. He has added an essential element to our clan, and has played a crucial role in our family dynamic as my dad has endured his battle with cancer.
Right now, we are waiting to hear about a specific child that could be our baby, too. And soon. We’ve been waiting three days since this particular birth-mother saw our profile book. This could very easily be another “no” in our time of waiting.
It is such a strange tension to live in every minute of every day, as we wait for healing for my dad, as we wait for a potential phone call from our social worker, and as my sister waits for her husband to return from his first long-term deployment; we are all in a season of waiting.
In a moment, everything can change. A scan can come back clear, or not. We could get a phone call saying we have been matched, or not.
Luckily, there is no “God is good…or not.” He is ALWAYS good.
My battle, as I try not to watch the clock too closely, is to remember the promises that were given to me as a treasure. These promises are good and true and are new for me every single morning. They are the promises that will be carried onward into forever, where things can never be taken away from us, including the people we love with our whole hearts.
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