The Wait......

This post is coming quite soon after my last one, but I think I just needed to write. So read, ignore, share, its up to you what you want to do with it. Really its just me venting, without having to see people's facial expressions, or have to answer questions, or see that look in their eye, the one that has no hope left in it. 

Its not that I mind updating people, but when all you have to give them is bad news, it makes it painful to share anything. 

It feels like a searing hot iron is sliding across my stomach every time I have to grudge up the news to give to people, these people who love me and only want to help and share that they care. I often think "how can I be so heartless towards these amazing people?" , it really isn't them at all, my love for them hasn't changed but this requirement of information sharing has created a gap, a distance that I need between people to safely avoid the searing pain in my stomach whenever I have to tell people about my Dad. 

He was supposed to be doing better, making progress, making improvements, moving to a rehab hospital, he was supposed to have a year....they said a year it could take up to a year until he wakes up, that's what they said. So my heart hunkered down for the long haul, thinking that we could do this, we could wait a year. I was there holding his hand, praying over him, at that time full of the most faith, I read scripture over him, declared things and believed them. Believing that within time, he would wake up and he would recover completely. 

I've heard stories of even longer coma's, I thought the wait would be the hardest part, no it isn't the waiting I would take a long wait compared to picking a date. 

We went from a year to just weeks.

We have weeks now to see if his body can fight the infections ravaging his lungs, we have weeks to see if he can begin to show some kind of improvement, to show that he can fight this, that he could one day have a life again. 

This decision isn't an easy one, it isn't anything except searing pain moving across every inch of our bodies, its stinging tears that are a constant on our faces, its a punch in the stomach, and a loss of breath. Everyone has to be in agreement, my step mom is really good at making sure everyone is on board, we all know the kind of adventurous, healthy, and incredibly active man that my father was, being a vegetable is not an option for him. My Dad has heaven awaiting him, we wouldn't feel right keeping him from that. 

Yet, I still can't feel a tiny bit jealous and a bit selfish, I just started building my relationship back up with my Dad these last few years. I can't picture a world with out him, I can't picture my life with out him in it. 

I am telling myself out loud every day that My God is the healer, I know him to be that, I have no question in my heart that he is capable of such things, and yet my heart is battling those questions of who gets the big miracles, and who gets the heartache. Who gets the insane recovery's that baffle medical professionals, and who gets the punch in the stomach loss's that no one saw coming? I feel as though I am asking for something that is out of my control, no matter how much I am loved, or how much I have faith in my healer, there is still an outcome that will hit me, for what I fear will be like a ton of bricks in the face. 

Do I want to see my father confined to a wheel chair for the rest of his life? Do I want to see this hero of mine unable to run, or joke, or laugh?  These are all questions the doctors have to ask us as we ponder the fate of my father. It feels as though we are doomed to a crappy situation no matter what we decide. 

I haven't stopped dreaming for two weeks about my Dad, in every dream its after the accident, he looks healthy and happy and more than anything else, he acts as though this accident never happened and except for the scars on his head you would never know that it did. These dreams fuel me and push me toward faith, and hope and muster a fight within me that I didn't know was there. The dreams are so real, every detail so specific, I sometimes feel like I am actually there, I can feel the heat of my dads arms when he hugs me, I can smell him, I can hear him laugh, its so real it hurts. 

I feel like the dreams are a blessing and a curse, I find every night I ache for them, beg God for another one, just one more. I wish so badly I could say they were some how prophetic, but I think its just a way that my heavenly father is showing his love. 

Several things in the post seem uncertain and for that I don't apologize because that is exactly what they are.  

However, there are a few things I know for sure. 

My Dad is headed for heaven when ever he does go and that will be his greatest adventure, and I will see him again and that day will be sweet. 

My God heals and can do anything including give my Dad a full recovery

It rains on the just and the unjust and he gives and takes away

He is surrounded by the most full of faith people I currently know, and they pray over him daily, they are also the ones who love him more perfectly than anyone else on this planet. 

I will make it through what ever happens, if it doesn't go the way I want then it will hurt, but I will make it. 

God hears me

I am kept by a faithful God. 

Like A Mary .....

This last week was one of the hardest weeks of my life, emotionally and spiritually speaking. I have heard it said that there are different types of failures we face, one of them is called the "Unforeseen Failure" the kind that you can't plan for, the kind that knocks the wind out of you. 

That is really the best way to describe what I am feeling and what I felt last week, I

felt like the wind was knocked out of me and I don't know how to catch my breath.

My dad was in a car accident, thrown from his vehicle and now rests in a coma with severe brain trauma.  Throughout the week of being in Colorado with my family I wrestled with many thoughts. 

My prayer most of the time was just that God would steady my heart, so that I could stand through these difficult moments. Facing my younger brothers and my step mom left in the wake of this insane nightmare, was incredibly difficult. Another breathless moment, two of my brothers were in the accident and they were not permitted to see my dad in the hospital. Every time I think of my dad in that hospital bed just frozen it feels like I am dreaming, just dreaming something terrible that I will wake up soon..then it hits me that this is real and this incredibly strong human that has been a role model of success and strength was now completely broken. One night as I was struggling for some hope, I felt like the Lord led me to this section of scripture. 

John 11~

This is the story of Lazarus, I have always focused on Lazarus himself and the story that tied around him solely. I never really focused on the people left in the aftermath of Lazaurs's death.
He had these sisters who loved him dearly; Mary and Martha, now Mary was the same Mary that lay at Jesus' feet wiping his feet with her hair and expensive perfume. She had an encounter with love and  gained favor from Jesus, it is clear that he loves this family.
The sisters sent word to Jesus that their brother was deathly ill, they sent this word because they are close with Jesus and they know he has the power to heal their loved one.
When Jesus heard the news that Lazarus was deathly ill he spoke these words into the atmosphere " This sickness will not end in death. No, it is for God's glory so that God's Son may be glorified through it." Jesus spoke this and yet he waited two days to go to the sisters, no word of comfort was sent, no acknowledgment that he even got the word about Lazarus, the sisters were just left waiting.
See I look at this part of scripture and I think of how those sisters must have felt, waiting not understanding why this healer, this prince of peace, this man Jesus who they know and love would not come to them to help their loved one. What must have gone through their minds, what heartache they must have felt with each passing day.
You can see how each sister dealt with those feelings, in vs 17 of the chapter you see that when Jesus arrives he learns that it has been four days since Lazarus's death. When Martha heard that Jesus was coming it was like all her bitterness and frustration surfaced and she went out to meet him.
But Mary stayed home,  Martha's first words to Jesus are a rebuke. She says to him " Lord, if you had been here, my brother would NOT have died. " I look at these two different approaches to pain and I see a reflection of myself. When there are things that I don't understand or that hurt when I feel like I see Jesus finally showing up in my situation I feel like I need to gently rebuke him and remind him that I am here in pain and that I have been waiting for him, and that if he had shown up sooner that maybe my outcome would have been different.
Now what the Lord ministered to me about was the way Mary responded, this is where my heart is right now.
After Martha goes back and forth with Jesus struggling with her unbelief to a degree and still trying to grasp the situation and handle it, she gets to a point where she goes and finds her sister Mary to let her know that Jesus was asking for her. See Mary stayed in this place of quiet submission, of being hid away until she heard that Jesus had arrived and called her out of that place she was in.
She rushed to meet him, and when she met with him she fell at his feet and began to weep and said the same exact thing that Martha had said to him, but it says that when he saw Mary weeping he was deeply moved in his spirit and troubled. It then says "Jesus wept."
Jesus already knew the outcome of this entire situation.
He already spoke it into existence, he knows what is going to happen. But these are people that he loves and he is seeing them in pain and hurt by this loss. Its here that I love how well it is displayed that Jesus was fully God and fully man.
When Jesus went to have the stone removed, he was given a few reasons why maybe it shouldn't by Martha who began to talk about the stench of death that would surely be strong after four days. It was like she had given up on hope, that death was the final say in Lazarus' life. A seed of unbelief had crept into her heart and began tot take root, that is what began to grow in those four days that she waited for Jesus.
Jesus gently but firmly reminds Martha that "If she believed then she would see the glory of God"

The rest of the story is awesome, he demands death to let go of Lazarus and he lives.

With my dad in this coma it has created quite the wait for us, we don't know when he will come out of it and the doctors like to remind us the big IF he will come out of it.

I read this whole chapter to my dad before I left, and I told him that our timing isn't the same as the Lord's. We don't fully understand what situations will have victory at the end and which ones will have more heartache. In everything HE is always mindful of us, he cares for us and he already knows the outcome. I wholeheartedly believe that my dad's coma will not end in death but like Lazarus his healing will be used for the Glory of God. I cling to this story and what revelation it holds, my heart is to be a Mary and wait patiently in peace with a tender heart towards the Lord.

Jesus will always get the ultimate say even in death, no situation is too far gone for him, no thing is to dead for resurrection. My heart is to not remind Jesus of why it might not work, but to lay humbly at his feet trusting him in all his ways.

That is my heart at least.
Its not easy and every day is a process of believing and trusting him.
For now we wait and we pray.