Usually I’m bursting at the seams with things to say but the new year has brought in zipped lips. For some reason it’s feeling sore. I don’t know how else to explain it. The ugliness of a life-altering diagnosis for my sister seemed like a 2016 thing. 2017 was supposed to be all healing and newness; birth and revival but it’s not yet. It’s still just as slow. It is sore.
I’m on the prayer team at church and last week we had an evening of celebrating and remembering all the crazy and miraculous things God has done in the last year. It was a really powerful time! People being healed from physical, spiritual, mental, and emotional aspects of their lives. It’s just incredible to all sit together and put words to the things God let us in on. But we didn’t get through the night without some shed tears about Kate. We can simultaneously rejoice in ways she’s been spared, or in timing to things that brings comfort, or in the many victories. The truth of the matter is that there are some stories from the last year that aren’t really happy endings. They may be one day, but today isn’t their day.
I feel like those people are my people. I have such a kindred spirit for those saying “but what about…xyz?”, “But what about that baby I lost?”, “But what about that marriage I was supposed to have?”, “But what about that cancer that wasn’t supposed to show up in my family?”.
Its so very hard to be in the “not yet” or even the “no” group. It’s not easy being a mourner that’s clinging to hope. I’ve been reading books about where God is in sorrow and let me tell you I had a whole lot of answers to that question before it was my personal struggle. It sure is easy to say “God is good” when your life is going as it should.
The hardest thing in the world to come to grips with is sometimes the clear answer is that it’s not about us. We are promised God and that is not synonymous with healing or rightness. Sometimes it doesn’t feel like enough but we aren’t the first family to go through hardship. We certainly aren’t the first family to wonder why our loved one isn’t being miraculously healed. Kate may be restored to our family, I truly believe she will and until that is true I will be begging the Lord on her behalf. But even if that’s not the way our story ends, I don’t want to have wasted my life asking “why?”. There’s a lot to be done and it’s just not helpful. So I’ve decided to stop. I’m out of control of this and that’s alright.
One day I’ll have all of the answers but in the meantime I need to be okay with “no” or “not yet”. I’ve got a whole crew depending on my ability to live life while experiencing sorrow and for them and for Kate I need to change my response. No more “why?”. Moving forward there is only room for “God, be near!”
rentals and beans 