The Awful Good; The Awful Bad

 Let me tell you what prayer looks like for me: it involves all the feels, if I have any, and often I feel nothing. Absolutely flat. Unfeeling. Blank. Numb. Even in those states, I pray. Sometimes my words are more thoughtful, sometimes they're a jumbled mess. I don't think it really matters to God - THAT I pray, I am convinced, delights His heart.

These days my head hits the pillow and my whole body slows down and then the feelings come. "I don't want this, God. I feel like You, in a single instant, handed me a pathway of suffering, of pain, of regret, of darkness. I know You were there, protecting my boy. I know You spared Him. I'm grateful, I'm SO grateful." Then I pause. I think about gratitude. What does it mean that I'm grateful? I open my heart before God and say, "You have been good to me, to him. I know it. His suffering is great - and ours, watching him suffer, is great too. I know it could have been worse. But in this moment, I want to tell You: it is BAD. It feels BAD. It hurts BAD. And yet I see You at work - You bring healing, You make provision for every need. You are there for us, even in the pain and darkness."

I slow my thoughts and I turn towards this pain. There is fear. There is dread. The road of recovery is long and it would be easy to borrow tomorrow's worries. "Worry is a choice," I tell myself. All that will unfold will unfold in God's loving hands, and my worrying will not add or detract from that. I will arrive at tomorrow, or the next day, or the next month, or the next mail delivery with bills, or the next surgeon visit, and we will pray and trust God in all things.

"Lord, I still feel I'm just crazy trusting You like this." My prayers are frank. Unfiltered, direct, raw.

God hears it all and welcomes me, my words, my every thought. 

Last night the dread began again. I've been handed a season of suffering - my life and my plans, all canceled in a sudden moment when Timo had his accident. Now my days are occupied, my hours are re-claimed, as with a newborn, all the child's needs become central. I tell God what I think of this state of affairs. I don't like it. I hate to see suffering. I hate that he is in pain. I hate that he has lost so much, so suddenly, and that this is his journey for now. I tell God, "This wasn't the plan." Then God reminds me of all the things I've prayed, specifically for this kid, for so many years. Even in recent weeks, desperate prayers that I tried to take back. I told God, "Please reach Him, no matter what it takes. No, I don't mean that...I take that back. Reach him, but go easy on him." Then I think of the many ways God has intervened in my life. I thank God for going easy on me. I pray He heals my boy. 

I live in the day's needs - the first things first. So many small tasks pile up. I am needed in so many ways, and I crumble under responsibility. It's not my strong suit. Any who know me in my running around getting kids lunches, picking them up, dropping them off, forgetting appointments all together - you know responsibility is my Achilles heel. Now I have doctors and forms to fill out and websites to check and phone calls and it's like I went from parenting two kids (my youngest 2) to now a very needy and significantly broken child. 

I see the amazing ways God has answered my prayers of desperation. Every night I prayed for protection for him. I drove behind him at times and gripped the wheel, praying fervently for his heart, mind, body, soul to be re-directed. I brought these prayers to daily prayer at Church. I trusted others to hold up my arms in prayer. God was not silent. He was not forgetful. He was working all along. I see it now. The prayers offered in faith, with no knowledge of what God was up to, were heard. 

It is the most horrific awful bad experience to watch excruciating suffering and pain in my child. I cannot call it good at any level. My first few texts of desperation said things like, "This is BAD BAD BAD." I didn't know how else to put it. And yet as I continue to discover small details of his accident, I see the awful GOOD in it all. Somehow, even in the worst pain and suffering, we see how God has spared our son. He has preserved his life. He has his limbs. He has a season of healing and recovery. 

Jacob wrestled with God and emerged with a lifelong limp - a painful reminder of his encounter. I imagine and pray Timo someday walks with the knowledge that God has met him and spared him. I pray his soul is woven deeply into the rich soil of the mercy and grace of God. I pray that God, the Loving and Kind Perfect Parent, will scoop his hurting body up and re-knit him together to be a vessel of grace for others.

For now, however, there is a work of lament. An honest reckoning that tells God how it feels. God can handle my grief - each stage of DABDA (Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance). Not only does God handle it, He walks with me in and through it. I continue to exercise and build trust muscles, knowing the everlasting arms are stronger yet. 

This morning as my lament began yet again, I remembered the words of Job when his wife is fed up with his suffering. She tells him to simply curse God and die. Job, I imagine without batting an eye, turns to her and tells her a profound truth: "Shall we accept good from God and not trouble?" (Job 2:10)

As I recalled this, I pictured God opening up my life to this suffering, and my resistance - even anger - refusal, to accept it. I don't want to receive this burden, this sorrow, this pain. And yet in the awful bad, there is awful good. I have tasted and seen the goodness of the Lord, even in this land of the living, where my son still lives. I have walked through the scene in my mind and had to grapple with the very stark potential reality of that night where we would have been planning a funeral rather than a recovery. I think, with grave horror, "That is even more awful. I couldn't stand it." And I remember that even in those dark moments, God would be present and give me grace for that trial. 

Will you pray for me, and with me, and our family, and our son, on this long journey to wholeness, whatever that might look like? 

I'm so grateful for all the ways our community is supporting us at this time.