Seriously God...do we all have to be sick in a week like this?
"No weapon formed against me (Elohim El Shaddai) Shall ever prosper (Elohim Adonai)" Sondae, "Eloheim"
The last ten days have been an explosive…in terms of four out of five persons in my family have been dealing with a bad stomach bug. I won’t go into any gory details, but as the latest victim, I’ve been bed-ridden and fatigued for the last three days.
Here is the urgency of the situation. My eldest daughter is in middle school, and back in the fall she went out on a whim and tried out for her drama club’s audition for the spring musical presentation of Mean Girls, Jr. To our collective surprise, she landed a decent role, and she has been practicing and singing all winter for this spring show. One can guess that this show is this very week.
So when I said four-out-of-five of us were sick, my daughter is one-out-of-five right now.
The entire week has been a series of disinfectant sprays and yelling at each other not to touch this door handle or that portion of the house. It’s been tense. Each prayer, no matter who it was with, has mentioned our daughter and asked for an invisible meta-physical cloak of Holy Spirit bubble wrap to surround her.
Though I am sick, I was the only person available to cook her boxed mac and cheese after she had come back late from her rehearsal because my wife was busy dealing with a newly found urine stain on our dinning room rug (we still don’t know the canine culprit between the two). Of course, I couldn’t touch the food as I prepared it, so I called my daughter over and instructed her how to cut two tablespoons of unsalted stick butter and drain noodles in a colander. It was a frustrating exercise, and this reminds me that after this musical I need to teach my daughter some basic life skills since she didn’t know how to cut a piece of butter from a stick. Just press down, don’t try to saw it in half!
The prior night my wife and I had trouble sleeping because of our stomachs, but my wife spent the night worried about whether our girl would get sick, miss out on her musical, and then what was all this she worked for? Then the thoughts of other random horrific things about our kids and family and church began to landslide into her mind for no apparent reason. Anxiety and spiritual warfare can be a nasty duo. A worry bomb had gone off and now none of us could sleep for a night.
For this week, this all gets to my reality that when I want some thing to work out a certain way for me or someone I love…I’m going to do everything and worry about everything I can in my power to see it happen.
Where there is a will, there’s a way, right? Where there is a will to protect someone or something there is way, right?
I tell myself that it has to be God’s will for us to protect what we love—our identity, our past, people around us, the future we have been working for, the experiences we want for our families. I’m sure God let’s us try, but life shows us it doesn’t always work out the way we want and our hearts break. All week we’ve be trying to avoid my daughter’s heart break, losing sleep, worrying, and doing everything we could. But yet there is still hours before showtime and she could take a turn for the worst. We never hope for disappointment for anyone, but does God want it for us at times?
Isn’t through our heartbreak we remember we need something more?
I’m going to keep praying that I can watch my daughter belt out her ridiculous songs on that theatre stage, but no matter the result I pray that in all her heartbreak or success she can see Jesus. As the one who wants to protect her and protect myself I think I’d rather live comfortably without the heartbreak. But there is peace on the other side of pain that could never be experienced without letting go. The silver lining will be if she cannot go up there on that stage this weekend I will be able to give her the biggest hug to remind her she is loved.
Psalm 34:18 The Lord is close to the brokenhearted
and saves those who are crushed in spirit.
In your life, what takes so much effort to protect? What might God be asking you to let go of and see what God has in store?