What Happens When Healing is Withheld?

I bowed my head and let the hot tears mix with the water from the showerhead. Both relentlessly streamed down my face. Desperation forced my hand and I wasn’t leaving until I knew my God heard me. I reached for the wall in an attempt to steady myself as the heaving of my shoulders was stealing my balance. As the tears fell, my heart pleaded for my daughter’s suffering to stop. For questions to be answered. For the disease to have a name and a treatment. Words spilled out of my soul as water spilled over my body. If I humble myself enough –- sink low enough, open my palms in that maddening “posture of acceptance” enough — maybe God will finally say: “Enough.”

It had been a journey to this moment of gut-wrenching prayer. Nursing a chronically ill child feels like being battered by waves. You stand boldly as long as you can, but each day is another crushing blow. You grow weary. What had begun as severe low-blood sugar episodes continued to include excruciating body-covering eczema, food allergies, hair loss, constant shivering, and painfully enlarged lymph nodes. The nights were filled with her suffering, and the days with our attempts to help ease suffering. We prayed for healing and for answers that never came. As her condition worsened, we ran out of words. Out of hope. And eventually out of prayers. And though, I had returned to persist in my intercessions, I had been reluctant to pray for total healing. Too weary to hope: until this moment.

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