Wow.. a discussion yesterday at my focus group, led me to a strange road in my mind. The sermon was “I have what it says I have.” Yes, we are all God centered women amidst challenging moments in our lives. I realize that attendance and dedication to attendance is no mistake weekly, stating this I am saying nothing happens in life by simple chance. We have great laughs, similar interest, a common need for more “good stuff” in our lives… so we join together weekly. There is POWER in numbers ! Many of us deal with and yes I said deal and live with depression on some level in our lives. We hold each other accountable to attend, isolation is the devils number one tool with a depressed spirit. So we share… we have laughed, we have cried, we have exposed our hearts which for some of us that is the biggest challenge.
Week after week we join. Praying for the rest of the week, discussing life’s details and sharing each others stories. God has truly BROUGHT us together. On so many levels we are a joined spirit. We add members, we loose members either way togetherness is of God. This week though, it all took me to an unusal place of odd clarity. We were discussing faith and favor… both misunderstood in my belief… favor is not winning the lotto it is Gods way of sustaining you until you win 🙂 ….That is how I explain it, It is what allows for joy when there is no human reason… God is capable of and will make ways we never would have never seen coming. Faith is believing that God has a bigger plan,That God has good and only good for, those who live in him.Even when the world says “no way”, your mind says “yes way”. Some say that it takes and reflects your level of faith in the miracles in your life…. no miracle not enough faith.. straighten up you life and your prayers will be answered. Now I know that is what was said to the disciples from Jesus himself. (Matthew17:20) ye of little faith…. But faith or no faith, read prior… Jesus himself healed the boy. Jesus did not leave the boy to suffer for the lack of faith . Like any parent or teacher he used the situation to teach them the a lesson. Great works require great faith, (yes,but maybe it takes activated faith.. topic for another day.) they lacked in faithin this situation, but it also says it only takes the faith of a mustard seed to make mountains move…. So they had NO faith in this certain instance. But important thing is… Jesus still healed the boy.
We are a group of women with similar questions in this area. (mom1)One of us is unable to conceive and carry a child, but blessed by God to adopt special needs children, One living already 3 years past expectations. (mom2)Another of us has a child with a long list of special needs and has already at had a transplant and several other surgeries. I myself grew up with a sister with a rare “terminal” disease. Doctors told my mom she would not live past 7, do what is best, place her in a home and move on. Yeah right… he did not know who he was speaking to. My mom brings a defining light to the saying…. women are like tea bags… you never know how strong they are until you put them in boiling water. She kept her, she loved her, and she was always her biggest and sometimes her only fan. But one of the most impressionable things my mom ever did was realize that she was not hers, she was Gods, and everyday with her was a blessing. When the day comes to being here without her it will be a temporary state. Now as a mom it hurts my heart to even try to really get that.
In the discussion in our group it was said by the second mom listed about that it really hurt her when people would say and sometimes just imply that it was a lack of faith impairing her daughters healing. She expressed the feeling of hurt from the comments and attitudes of fellow “Christians” during her infant years of struggling to survive. This made me angry, and brought back discussions of things people would suggest to my mom. My sister was born when my mom and dad were 17 almost 18. Many people believed that my sister was a punishment of sorts….. How wrong they were. Let me repeat that , HOW WRONG THEY WERE. God does not punish anyone by blessing them with life. Or even death for that matter. He does however know what makes us stronger and what we can handle. He can and does do mighty things according to his plans, not ours. Is this not enough faith for healing or is this Gods favor over the situation very vividly painted out for all of us?
The discussion also stung because through a journey with a friends loosing battle with a rare disease I became confused on how I believed. Not what … but how. I believe God can and does heal. though it has to be his plan. I believe our days are numbered from the start and short of suicide (which is a grey area too) our date of death is predetermined. She came home and had no prognosis, and no real solid diagnosis that could be written. It was like a “house” episode that never ended for a solid year and a half. I began caring for her with the attitude of no prognosis… no problem, that means the sky is our limit. They truly expect “nothing”… so anything is good… right. Prayers from everyone often… daily I would care for her and pray. She was infantile. I have never appreciated life as much as the moment I placed her frail body, a shell of the body I new of prior, onto a shower chair and began bathing her. I prayed she be herself again… whole, mind and body. But daily her spirits slipped. She had fought a BRAVE fight, She was finished with her race. God welcomed her home in October of last year. In our few months apart I prayed, I tried to learn what Gods intent of all of the mess was, and I still wait patiently for the understanding. It changed me… I believed and had HUGE faith that she would be Okay. What capacity? I do not know that was up to God, I believed that God would let her enjoy her kids here on earth, I prayed like no ones business and in the process I began making needed changes in my own life…. But God would not allow her too suffer for me to “get It” would he? No i say, but he allows us to see good in something that appears to most as all bad.
So in group my friend stated the pain in her situation and it set fire to my own. This is where Gods wisdom took me. We see life as something we deserve. Instead, it is a Gift. When one even dares to say or think that it is a lack of faith or a persons sin getting in the way of Gods healing…. I say this…. Maybe just maybe if we saw life “the simple act of conception to birth, breathing and onto death as the true miracle it is we would have a clearer understanding of what is really going on. Maybe, just maybe, God wants us to see that Life, in spite of the grave situation is the miracle we are missing.
Mom number one in my group, lost baby after baby due to prior abuse. Finally giving up and adopting children with abusive backgrounds, a common struggle. Later to adopt children whom had multiple special needs, bleak prognosises She is now creating beautiful thriving children daily. God provided her with children in a much different way than she had planned.But her situations prior to adoptions allowed her to want life in her arms bad enough, that when it came to writing what will you “accept” on the foster papers she wrote “anything”. Her children LIVE daily with multiple reasons NOT to live and thrive…. But “somehow” they do. God… I say God. Is it favor or lack of faith that they still have “problems” yet live “broken”? Her youngest four are all miracle babies and “survivors” before they turned 1. Life, I say again, Life.
Mom number two has the same situation with her forth child. Multiple reasons not to live productively, but enrolled in a “normal” school with ” normal” peers…. well what do you say to that? Yes she has different needs medically than other children…. but she is ALIVE and Thriving as well. What do you say to that…. lack of faith, not what I see. I see great faith to believe that her days will be many, her laughter be mighty, her heart and soul be light knowing God has got her back !
My own sister and Mom. A story for the best seller list. Both my heroes although I must say not always. The daily struggles as a family to encourage independence in her, were huge at times. But many many hours and years later she lives in her own duplex, is excited when a bill comes so she can pay it with her check book, working full time, maintaining and thriving at 3 separate jobs. Yeah yeah some people may see it as she does not drive, she does best with a strict routine, she has the mentality of a young teenager. But did you know she has brain tumor (3) which should still be causing seizures often. She has tumors on her kidneys that should make them not function. To remove them you would have to take both of her kidneys entirely. Instead she has had an experimental procedure preformed as a life saving measure only, that was to last 5 years at most , it is still working 18 years later. Doctors have been wrong so many times it is magical. But even more wrong are the people who would say this “non healing” too is a lack of faith. No miracle… maybe not in your eyes. But look through mine. I never prayed she would be healed. As a child I prayed just that she would live. And she will still say to you if you ask her… “Yep she is my sis, I love her, but we could never live together again.” Love that line…. Love my miracle.
As for my mind in my situation with my good friend. I have little understanding as to why, or why not. Yes Life is what I see as a miracle to sometimes be….But is it meant to be here on Earth or in heaven? She medically was mistreated (to a degree) with high dose steroids. It saved her baby but caused a chain of reactions to take place in her own body that doctors did not see coming, now they know. I Pray that her spirit live on strong, through the lessons they learned while researching her illness. She was a firefighter and EMT-I and saving lives was her passion. She can do that from where she is, through the doctors down here…. I miss her daily and I have to know that her day was her day.That she taught others how to live, in the hard process of watching her die. She was truly healed and made whole it was just in heaven. Will I ever have a day that goes by that I wish she could be sharing in the events with me… no. But, I would never, wish her back here broken again either. She lived… full of life and I pray that one day it be said that she made a huge bang in the treatment process of Lupus on her way out, that saved the lives of many. God did not deny my prayer for healing he allowed what needed to be learned from her situation to be learned and documented so that it all had bigger purpose. My caring for her and believing in Gods healing power, allowed me to enjoy many moments, a lot of what turned out to be “last times” with her. See had I thought about it being possibly her “lasts”, I would have never enjoyed them the way we did. That was a blessing.
So I pray this helps you look a bit differently about Gods presence in your life. Mainly I pray that affects the way you live. So many of us, myself included, go through life not living. Not taking the time to see God in our daily lives, and begging for him to show himself to us. Stop, for just a moment and think from a different angle. You will always be amazed at just how present he really is. His purpose in our focus group is huge. It has created an enviroment for hope, for healing, for new life in a dead situation and a place for if nothing else commonness in thought. I love how God saw us together before we ever met for this current purpose. I pray that after you read this that you say a prayer and ask God for your lives to affect half as many lives as these lives above have in their abnormal, non healed states. I pray mine does. BTW my sister the one who would not live past 7…. she will turn 39 on May 18th of this year. Hope to you and yours. Gods favor in a situation is more valuable daily than the occasional “miracle” some people stop living and are waiting on.
One last word… In the first paragraph of this I stated how isolation is the devils biggest tool…. Please Live life together often. We are all not so different …. we are actually all quite similar. (But the Devil doesn’t want us to know this.)