For Justice

I’m taking a break from telling y’all about our trip to DC because I just need to encourage a friend.  And I need for her to see in a very public way how much she is loved.  My dear friend is staring down brokenness in a sad way and I want so much to have just the right words to take all of her pain away.
 

But I just can’t. 

I have no idea what she is feeling or going through.  And, unfortunately, my own experiences with brokenness tell me that much of life’s adversity is like the children’s book Going on a Bear Hunt—you can’t go over it, you can’t go under it, you just have to go through it.  At some point in all of our lives, if we’re lucky enough to love to the point we risk our hearts being shattered, we all must take our turn walking through the valley of the shadow of death. 

And so I offer to her, and to you, my dear reader, the only thing I know to be true:  there can be no resurrection without a crucifixion.  There is no way to get to the glory of Easter morning without first stopping in the bloody pain of Good Friday.

When I first entered the hospital with Henry, there were many doubts.  We didn’t know whether I would live to see the next day, whether Henry would make it, or would events unfold that left Sloan and I making difficult decisions when we were just emotionally raw and grasping at the faith we were struggling to maintain. 

For some reason, every time I tried to pray I found myself speechless.  Words simply could not come.  Instead, when I shut my eyes, I could hear a little voice inside me, randomly, asking me the first question of the Heidelberg Catechism-- Christian, what is your only comfort in life and in death?  That I am not my own, but belong—body and soul, in life and in death—to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ.  He has fully ­­­ paid for all my sins with his precious blood, and has set me free from the tyranny of the devil.  He also watches over me in such a way that not a hair can fall from my head without the will of my Father in heaven: in fact, all things must work together for my salvation.  Because I belong to him, Christ, by his Holy Spirit, assures me of eternal life and makes me wholeheartedly willing and ready from now on to live for him. 

The simple fact that I could remember it verbatim was certainly not because I once memorized it in Seminary but Divine intervention.  (Seeing as I could NOT remember all of it on the day of my final exam.  Nor could I remember all of it now.   Thank you, Google.)  So instead of praying, I just over and over reminded myself that I belonged.  That I’d been set free.  That I was being watched over and that my and Henry’s seemingly being at death’s door was not because God had taken a nap or was too busy fretting over events in the Middle East. 

The next day, our Pastor came to visit us.  He asked me how he could specifically be praying for our family.  He didn’t seem to be saying, “How can I and the staff be praying for you,” rather he was just my spiritual leader gently asking what I thought I needed.  Sloan asked for wisdom, for healing, to make it through the weekend alive.  I asked that I’d be able to stay in the hospital for a good long while.  He confessed that was the first time he’d ever heard that request.  And then, quietly, almost as an afterthought, I asked him to pray that I wouldn’t believe the lies that were loitering about my heart and mind.

Right then and there, he took my hand and began to pray aloud.  He prayed that I would know that Jesus was for me.  That Jesus adored me.  That Henry and I were precious to God.  He prayed for God to give me the faith to trust in Him and the strength to not believe every lie coming at me.  He prayed for me to have a soft heart, a heart that would not become brittle or bitter from having suffered.  He prayed for me to believe that God was good despite all present evidence to the contrary.

So this, my darling friend, is what I pray for you.  For you to not believe the lies.  I trust that somewhere deep down you know what is true about yourself—that you are lovely, and strong, and smart, and funny, and a great friend, a great Mom, and a great writer.  But I also want you, as we enter into Easter, to believe what is true about God—He is for you and you are not facing this brokenness alone.

God is not foreign to being let down.  Just tonight Henry and I were talking about how when Jesus asked his best friends to pray for him and be with him because he was grieving and they took a nap.  (To which, Henry said, “They slept in a garden.  That’s so silly.”)  Jesus knows what it is like to be betrayed.  He knows the cost of a broken heart, of unrequited love.   It is for this very thing that Jesus died. 

You are loved.  You are cherished.  Your name is written on his hand.