Tonight I laid the last of the tile in our entry room. Grout is next, and then it's done. Normally, finishing a major portion of a task would be the subject of my gratitude journal, but right now, it's pretty low on my list of what is important. Our granddaughter Alex is in a waiting room at Buffalo General waiting for a specialist. The emergency room is full of people and no beds are available. So we wait; another hard gift of grace. I've worked through the afternoon and evening, but my heart isn't in it. The work just keeps me busy, my mind occupied. I don't know how to reconcile Al's illness with God's grace, mercy, and love, so I'm having to trust, and I have to confess, I don't like it one bit. Not knowing what is wrong and being unfamiliar with parasitic disease, we fear what we don't know.
If Al were our only concern, it would be enough, but our neighbor is battling cancer, and I could list a dozen situations right off the top of my head where friends are facing circumstances that threaten to unravel all they hold dear. Years ago, a young woman in our congregation was deathly ill. She recovered, and when she got back to church, thanked everyone for their prayers. "Sometimes you are so sick you can't even pray for yourself," she said. "That's when you depend on the prayers of others." Tonight, my prayers feel so powerless and futile. Words get stuck in my throat and my heart is barren. We are leaning hard on God, and on the prayers of his faithful people. In the midst of our questioning and all the scenarios our minds can conjure up when the imagination runs wild, we lean hard, and are grateful for those who pray when we cannot.
We're continuing to pray for her here.
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