Stop pretending! It is okay NOT to be okay as I heard one of my sisters say this past week. I have sometimes asked someone, “How are you?” and they would answer, “I’m alright” when I knew that they were not. And I would then respond with the truth, “No you are not okay, right now, but you are going to be okay.”
This past year we have had so many prayer requests for those who were at death’s door and as we earnestly prayed, some lived, and some did not. To be notified that someone is in a desperate situation, especially hanging between life and death creates an unimaginable urgency to pray. As Christians we know that God is the healer and that one word from Him, healing can come and sometimes it does and sometimes it just does not happen as we expect it to. I especially have a hard time when it involves the young, the children.
This past year of the thirty-three people who are a part of the In His Image ministry team, 4 have lost fathers, one has lost a mother and other family members and it just seems to be never ending! Just two days ago we received a request for a family who lost their 18-year-old who drowned in a boating accident and today a mother who gave birth three weeks ago passed. I could hear the anguish and grief when the caller said, “I can’t take any more of this.” Her heart was breaking under the weight of grief. All, at that moment was NOT okay.
Sometimes we are NOT those spiritual giants that they tell us we should be. Sometimes we grieve so deep and cry so hard that we cannot breathe. We pray for those who cannot pray for themselves. We cry right along with them sometimes not uttering a word. We wrap our arms around them and allow them to cry until they have no more tears left. They don’t know the helplessness that we feel inside and yet we muster the strength to keep on praying and keep on standing and keep on believing when everything looks like there is nothing to hope for. At that moment there are no spiritual sounding cliques to utter only the quiet leaning on the One in whom we still trust and believe.
This one thing that I am assured of: I am ever learning to lean on my Father! He is still the Comforter and Healer and Waymaker and Miracle Worker!