Today’s Part II continues on and concludes what we began yesterday. Tomorrow we will continue in the vein the author of “Go Now,” Wendell Martin so vividly described for us as “waiting on the Lord” in his chapter 40 titled “Through the Valley of the Shadow of Death” wherein Daisy and Wendell and their family discovered God’s incredible love for them in new ways and deeper levels that they would have never understood without going through the events (new normals?) they did since Daisy’s stroke four years ago.
Looking back, they clearly saw God’s loving kindness erupting about them in the darkest hours of their lives. Rather than dwelling on the consuming chaos, they chose instead to “wait on the Lord” seeing God’s love and kindness overflowing into their lives, and did not dwell on those aspects of life that were temporarily lost.
Continuing on from Part I:
As I entered the room, the Bible verses the pastor had given me came rushing back to my memory. The Holy Spirit came powerfully, bringing them to life in a way that confirmed in my heart that God was with us, in complete control, and that we were caught up in a mystery of His unfolding destiny for our lives. With what might have been divine inspiration, I told the children to stand at each corner of her bed, I began to tell the story from Mark 2, emphasizing about how hard it had been for the paralyzed man and his friends to get to Jesus.
“That’s how I feel right now,” I explained to my children. “I know Jesus can heal your mother, but I feel so far and void of faith for her healing right now. So, let’s just imagine that we are people in the Bible story, struggling to get to Jesus. Imagine that we are on top of the roof of the house.” I paused to give time for the picture to be formed in their minds. “Now, imagine that we are tearing off the roof.”
Next, I had them imagine that each of us had a rope to which was tied a corner of the bed. “I see Jesus down through the hole down there. Let’s lower Daisy down to Him. Can you see Him?” We actually made the motions of lowering the bed with the ropes. “Good. She is down there now in front of Jesus.”
I felt like I was in a dream, caught between an imaginary world and reality. OK. Now, on the count of three, we’re going to let go of the ropes.”
At that instance, the moment of letting go of the rope, something shifted in my heart. The weight of all I was carrying seemed to slide completely out of my hands, and like letting go of a rope, it fell into a tangled pile at the feet of Jesus. There was no way to get Daisy back. The release of the situation was complete, completely in Jesus’ hands.
A wave of relief rolled off me. It came from complete surrender of what I loved and cared about the most into whatever purposes God had for our lives. Honestly, I didn’t have faith that she would be healed. But I did have faith that Daisy was in the presence of the greatest love imaginable. In fact, I was completely confident that no matter what came in the coming days, no matter if Daisy lived, died, or remained in a vegetative state for the rest of her life, which was the absolute best scenario the doctors offered me, it would come out of the depths of God’s best expression of love for us. My faith was in God’s love, and in that I found very solid footing for the days ahead.
Needless to say from that time on, Daisy began such remarkable improvements that it kept the doctors scratching their heads in amazement. She was in intensive care for nine days before being moved to a regular hospital room. One day three weeks later, the neurologist who had first told me Daisy would die, stopped by Daisy’s room for a visit.
“I just came by because I wanted to tell you that you are a real miracle!” By now Daisy was able to sit up up on her own, talk, eat, and had even taken a few steps.
The next day, the same neurologist came by Daisy’s room again. “I just want to make sure you that you really understand what I told you yesterday. You are a genuine miracle! You really need to understand this!”
While this journey has been long and extremely challenging, Daisy’s recovery has been nothing less than miraculous. Though it required three months of hospitalization and ongoing therapy, today, she gets around on her own using a rolling walker because of ongoing dizziness and limited sensation on her left side. At the same time, she has reached her goal of playing ping pong again with her friends at the local community center. She is not in a vegetative condition as science predicted, but she cooks vegetables on the stove at our home and then eats them.
Through all this, we have discovered God’s incredible love for us in new ways and at deeper levels that we would have never understood without going through the things we encountered during the past four years.
Looking back, we clearly see God’s loving kindness spilling into the darkest hours of our lives. We choose to see what we want to see. We choose to see the gain of God’s love and kindness overflowing into our lives, not those things that have been temporarily lost. Some days are harder than others. That is the reality. However, never have we witnessed God’s strength in our times of weakness as we have over these past four years.
With grateful hearts, we say with certainty and full conviction, “We know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to His purpose for them” (Romans 8:28 NLT).
NEXT UP: “While You ARE Waiting….”