Monday, February 16, 2015

To the woman who's waiting....

I cried with you that night a few months after your 30th birthday. My best friend. You were tired of waiting, tired of trusting God would provide for the longing He'd placed in your heart. Everyone's best bridesmaid, you never failed in happiness for your girlfriends as one by one we fell in love and tied the knot. Then started having babies. You had an exciting life, I thought. Traveling wherever the wind took you, mission work in central America as your full-time profession. And you never complained about the beautiful life you found yourself in, you excelled at it, the singleness. But we prayed and cried and held each other as you bore your heart's deepest longings, deepest questions of God's ultimate faithfulness. Why would He give the desire and giftings to be a wife and bear children and then withold it from you? Isn't He a good God?

******
I watched the tears you cried as a foreign government put yet another hold on his adoption. Your child - left in a cruel orphanage on the other side of the world... without you. Your fervent prayers feel hallow, as day after long day goes by without a word. Isn't He Father to the fatherless? Why does it feel like He isn't pleading this fatherless child's cause? The powers of this world seem to be calling the shots over his small life. You ache and scream in the quiet of your bedroom closet, it's out of your hands. Where is the One who can do something?

*****
Another failed fertility treatment. You feel like God just sucker punched you. You guess He just doesn't think you'd make a very good mother. So your dreams of being up all night with your crying infant, the baby showers, the first steps, all of it... it feels to have slipped out of reach, or more like it's been violently torn from your grasp and you're left bleeding. You plead with the Lord to just show you He cares. Your arms ache with emptiness and your tears feel as though they go unnoticed by the One who says He knows them all. It feels like every woman you see is pregnant - and complaining about it - while you long to trade this hurt for the aches and pains of child-bearing. Your prayers are getting shorter, you're not sure you have anything left to say to the One who continues to say, "no."

****
Every night I prayed through tears that He would allow the symptoms to ease up. I pled that He would only take away the fog that MS is notorious for. "Is it too much to ask to just think clearly?" I ask Him. And every morning, I woke with the fatigue more unbearable, the fog more intense and the numbness ever increasing around my body. I hate needing help from others, I say I'm feeling fine when the truth is the room is spinning and my feet feel like I'm walking on needles with every step I take and I can barely make sense of what you're saying because this makes me feel like I'm somewhere else. Jesus, you've healed so many others, I know you're capable. But why does it feel like you're so late?

*****

You feel stuck and alone, in this place of waiting, of uncertainty, of pain. Whatever heartache you are facing today, please know that He sees you. And while your circumstances and suffering feel so harsh that you can't make sense of a loving God, know that God Himself was broken in two. He knows. He was broken straight in half at the cross to conquer the brokenness where you have found yourself. He loves you and He hears you.

Each of the true stories above have a "rest of the story." My best friend... she's planning her wedding with an awesome man. Yes, it feels late and maybe she will never understand why her wait was so long and painful, but I know she'd tell you that Jesus found her there in the loneliness. And that even if He never brought her this good man - that He is still faithful. The child in an institution all the way around that world, he is home with his family tonight. The battle was long and excruciating, but small and huge miracles brought him home. The woman whose heart was shattered at another closed door to motherhood now has a house full of children that God led her to through a back door.. though He has yet to open her womb, He has made her mother of many. The MS may not be fully healed, but it's the biggest avenue in my life that God has made His presence and power known to me.

You feel forgotten, shut out, abandoned.

He says you are honored, treasured, accepted.
He sees you and He will meet you there.

Believe the Truth, sweet friends.
I pray that we learn to suffer well.

******

Interested in reading more truth about finding God's goodness in the midst of suffering? This book has been such a blessing to my soul as Sara pointed me to Jesus' arms and His sweet presence that is so available to each of us. Every Bitter Thing is Sweet  by Sara Hagerty

"The hungry are the ones who find loss, waiting and dissapointed expectations to be the place of life changing God-encounters."


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