Bravery: When Doors Close and Healing Doesn't Come

She waits for the second blue line to show up on the stick. He waits, for his name to show up on the resettlement list for refugees.  She waits to meet the man of her dreams.  He waits to hear the cancer is finally in remission.  She waits for her chronic pain to abate.  He waits for relief from his anxiety.

What they are waiting for, doesn’t come. The door is shut.

Everything is broken, some things are redeemed, but some things are buried in the dirt and even though you wait for a sign of hope springing up from the ground, sometimes it doesn’t come.  You water the soil with your tears, you shout to the clouds with your grief, and you wait.  You ask and you plead but still you remain, waiting.

No relief.

Still lower you go.  You rally the prayer warriors, you fast and you rail against the God of the heavens, and maybe, His healing does not pour down like the rain.

Maybe His plans aren’t your own.

But He looks for you in the dust.

He unburies your heart from the ashes.

He puts your tears on His cheeks and weeps with you.

He calms your soul with words of life.

He unburdens you from the weight of your suffering and pours on you His oil of love.  Of grace.  Of sufficiency.

Maybe, the relief you seek does not come how you want it to.  Maybe nothing is as you hoped.  Maybe all that you fear is upon you and nothing in you knows how to carry on in this fierce wind of waiting.  Maybe healing isn’t on the horizon, not in the plans. 

Then what?

The whims of your emotions fail you.  The endurance of your strength leaves you.  The control you hang on to unravels. What is left is not your circumstances, all the things you have and do not have.  What you have left is just you, and Him.  A flicker of faith may be all that remains but it is enough to start a fire that takes over the world. 

Healing may not come but He has.

Hope may yet wane but His plans won’t.

Your affections for life may fade but His passion for You does not.

In the dance, you hold Him as He holds you and you move on together.  In the posture of acceptance is the abundance of life as you trust and look to Him.  He is good.  He has not forgotten you.  You are brave because you still hold on to Him when your circumstances make no sense.  They might never make sense.  But His presence does. 

And that will be your enough.

Psalm 34:18 The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.