Trust in the Wrestling

Social Media is a funny thing. I can get sucked into other peoples’ highlight reals and lift my head up 20 minutes later ashamed I just wasted that time doing nothing. Literally nothing.

But then there are other times when I get sucked into someone’s story and it’s one in which I praise God for this tricky social experiment. Because with the murkiness of the social space comes also the opportunity to put prayer needs out there in ways that otherwise no one would ever know.

This morning as I sat on my back porch in the cooler summer air, I was drawn into one families fight for their daughter. She needs a miracle. Apart from it, medicine says she will surely go home to Jesus. She is the same age as my son. Seven. Seven little but strong years old.

There was a season in my life, for quite some time if I’m honest, where I couldn't quite gather my mind or feelings around grief. Partly because I hadn’t experienced it first hand—at least not a significant loss other than a boyfriend or something. But also because I had a shallow faith. A faith that hadn’t wrestled, or found the need to, with the fact that the Jesus I have come to know and love could allow such deep hurt, pain, and earth-shattering loss. The One who is Love could allow really, really awful things to happen. I still have a very, very hard time wrapping my head around such things. But those are the paradoxes of this faith walk. And they aren’t easy to walk through. Yet, we are forced to because this life isn’t perfect.

Sometimes there is a myth accepted and even promoted that if you follow Jesus life will get easier. That’s a bold faced lie. We are not immune or released from the pain, heartache, and pure gut-wrenching hurt that comes in this life. And I wonder, through tear-filled eyes as I read this one father’s faith for miraculous healing for his daughter, as he draws near to the Healer—what are you doing, God? Why have you allowed this to happen? Why haven’t you healed her yet? My heart hurts so deeply for these parents. And I want answers for them! And selfishly, for me too.

And this, is the Holy ground where He meets us.

I don’t understand God, and I want answers. But I also know your ways are higher than the earth and your thoughts are not my thoughts. I know that you are faithful to complete the work you have you begun and that you are near to the broken-hearted.

So as I pray fervently, and as I wrestle at times with the questions I will never be able to answer this side of heaven, I will trust in what I know to be true. You are Love, You ache with us, and You promise to walk with us through the valleys and to climb the mountain tops with us. I will find you in all the places when I seek you, because you hem me in before and behind.

I don’t understand your ways, God. But I want to walk in trust and confidence in the God that I know you are. And I pray, with all my might, that we might see a miracle this side of Heaven for this little girl.