Despair or Hope? When the Doctor Has Bad News

Loud cracking sounds startle me from my sleep. With the wars in the middle east, I roll my head over as thoughts already consume me, “What was that?” I ask sleeping husband.

“Thunder and lightening”, he whispers.

And with Israel having no peace, and Russia domineering Ukraine, it can be hard not to think the wars of the world can’t over-taken our time and our place.

Peace roles down my back. I thank God for my ancestors land.  Then, restless legs carry me down the spiral staircase, here to these keys.  Words flashing in my mind…

Until I put them here before me.  Because life will keep going…but we must find a way to unravel all we are holding…or we just might explode.

“I was born this way?” My mind flashes to when I saw her face in my rear-view mirror yesterday.  Mouth open, eyes staring, as if she had just heard something that would change her life forever.

And it did. 

The news that my eight-year-old daughter wasn’t “injured”, but was born deaf in one ear. The fact that struggles sometimes are not from the wars we are experiencing…but a result from the battles generations before us faced…and failed.  And we are stuck with the consequences, trying to digest our lives, finding hope amidst someone else’s worst mistakes.

I gulp. My heart falls as if I am riding a sky-scraping roller coaster…and just want off.  Little did I know, the day had just begun.

The optomologist pulls me from the waiting room.  Our foster toddler starts screaming, locked in a small, dark room….triggers….something.

So, I walk to the lobby where the secretary, who happens to have once been also a foster parent, gives our ragging little one jelly beans.

Normally, I cringe every time little children are given sugar, anything damaging to their innocent, heaven-sent bodies…

But sometimes coping, breathing, making it through another hour, can hold precedence over any harsh rules to “preserve” or “produce” perfect children…

So, she eats jelly beans.  And I go into see the doctor.  Hands free.

“She has white spots in the retina of both eyes.”  He tells me.  “Has she been looking at the sun? She must have been looking at the sun.” He sounds panicked. “She needs to go see a specialist.”

And I don’t worry.  My goal simply being to get out of the building, without seeing more people I know, holding a baby who is ready to explode because they are all out of pacifying jelly beans.

And my eight year old wonders why she doesn’t need glasses, but needs a specialist instead.

But then, it’s only eleven a.m. and I start educating myself about what these “white spots” mean. And I find, any spot in the retina in kids is never good…it can be progressive, irreversible, and with no remedy to stop it’s take-over.

And like the storm this morning, I realize I am in my own war.  A war with facts, thoughts, emotions.  A war with the enemy of my soul.  A war needing faith as my shield, the word of God, the defender of my soul…

It is here I get stuck.  Here I sit in the drenching rain on this warm summer day.  Here I get to choose how I will respond to mother’s that leave kids hearing impaired.  Pregnant ones who harm innocent victims, handicapping their lives by their own selfishness and carelessness…

And a darkness of thoughts mixes with the dark clouds and rain I see flooding the dry ground outside.

And why should children ever have to live, suffering because the one carrying heaven…didn’t realize she has a miracle inside…forgetting that a perfect little flawless one carries the fragrance of heaven, resides in the very fullness of her insides?   

And why do we need to inform these miracle-carries that children should never be locked inside rooms
neglected by their mothers, or given toxic drugs, or abandoned in cribs, preferring their own cravings over any need to protect their children…cradling the perfect soul God’s given them?

For each child is a miracle..and yet daily, far too many forget it.

I drive later that day.  Because few things can heal me like a long drive and some worship music. And it here, in this battling storm, friends’ voices flash inside me, loud and clear…

“We must love the families as much as these kids.”  “What an amazing thing to love and have grace for the parents of these children.  What a gift.”

I start to sink in my furry.  War with the thoughts that my daughter may be blinding, her ears already leading her to wear aids, in a world where sound is everything.

And yet, I have a choice to make, because joy, peace, forgiveness, and mercy aren’t just going to run up and grab me.  Love is never going to flood me, simply because I am some kind of “good person”.

I wrestle there in my car.  Thunder strikes down.  Lightning grips me in a way I have never felt before…

And I think of my little girl, unable to see.  The challenges she already faces, in a world she has already learned, can be so mean…

And I cry up to the heavens, “Jesus”…because sometimes no other word can heal the broken soul like the name of God incarnate…the one who takes dead things and rebirths them, making them whole again by the power of His resurrection.

“Help me”….

My own life almost instantly flashes before my eyes. “Worse things…I have done worse things…”  My judgement turns to the life I had before I started playing “good Christian”…

And instead of alligning me and God, us vs. them….I realize I am still on the side of “sinner”.  God knows, the heart of my hearts is capable of even greater sins of selfishness.

And why is it…we don’t want to look upon the ugly parts of our hearts…only the good?  Why do we all like”saint”…but somewhere along the way in our Christian walk, we forget that we are still carnal, sinners whose hearts are still wicked above all else?

And I have murdered with my thoughts…condemned with selfish, the souls of others in my mind…

While love alone can redeem the hope of one caught in the battlefield, held captive by the lie that there is no way out of whatever we are going through. Rebuke the enemy who always seeks to dethrone the character of God..taunting…”God is not stronger, greatest than our fears”.

“We’ll take her to the healing room”…”We’ll do whatever it takes to care for her”, my husband tells me on the other line.

As I lay down my sword, I feel God start silencing the lightening striking at the core of me…

“Help me love the parents”….I whisper to a God who has met me on my bedroom floor.  Rolls of tissue, prayer confessing all I have known for one straight hour.

“There is hope.  There is always hope.  Without hope, surely the heart would die.” I say out loud to a God who always meets us in our cries. 

And I remember when I used to live denying bad things could happen to Christians, thinking God doesn’t allow us to suffer in a world where thunder can scream to us clearer than His voice inside us.  I used to think positive thinking, and ignorant optimism was the answer to all my worries…

But yet, as I leave my bedroom, truth pierces deeply…“It’s not about me”.  And I turn my focus to The One. Realizing…

• Only one name, has the power to stop the storm.
• Only one Messiah can silence the roaring of the enemy trying to steal our hope.  
• Only one God oversees every war.
• Only One Father still loves all those mom’s giving up their kids…All the children that live with the consequences of their family’s sins.  
• Only one Redeemer can heal the weak and helpless soul.  
• Only one Lord rules over all principalities and rulers in this world.  
• Only one God has dominion over the tide of emotions that can flood us when we least expect it…

So, I cry out to Him.

Then, turn on the worship music and praise Him.  In sickness and in health, I praise Him.  With worries, and doubts…I will praise Him.  Through every battle I face in a world wanting to tare away our hope…I will exalt Him…

For this morning, it was just thunder and lightening…

But there is a battle taking place.  In all of us…

Who or what will we lean on?  Who will we run to, cry out, cling to…when rain starts falling and lightening strikes the soul?

(Linking with Barbie)