‘Pray without ceasing.’ 1 Thessalonians 5:17
Have you ever prayed without stopping? As a mom, praying without stopping is like breathing – it’s natural.
I don’t know about you, but my prayers are rarely answered in the way that I originally prayed. Whether for marriages, families, church, work, etc. – I typically pray one way and God answers in ways that I rarely understand. But if there is one thing that I’ve learned in my many years of praying, it’s that God’s timing, purposes and end results are far better than anything I can imagine.
“Because of the LORD's great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. I say to myself, ‘The LORD is my portion; therefore I will wait for him.’” Lamentations 3:22-24
Our family has been praying without ceasing for a young woman, Ashley. She grew up in our home town, she was in school with my sons, her mom was their music teacher…you get the picture.
In my prayer time, besides asking God to heal Ashley from a lung transplant and complications from a stroke, I have also been asking Him to allow her to go home for Thanksgiving so she and her family could have a break from hospital life.
God had other plans. Once again, my prayers might not have been answered like I thought but I’m sure you’ll agree that His plans were pretty awesome and had greater impact. Below is an excerpt from her mom’s Face book blog. They’ve prepared a Thanksgiving dinner at the apartment where they’ve been living while their daughter is in the hospital~
It was a nice little gathering of people who otherwise would never have met each other let alone shared a Thanksgiving meal together. We shared each other's stories of hospitalizations and setbacks and almost getting home times with each other. Though we all come from different parts of the country, today we had much in common and I know God used that to bring encouragement into each of our lives. Justin (Ashley’s boyfriend) came over and got a plate of food when Ashley was napping. She had a few bites later but was more interested in her strawberry jello.
Later on, we all tried a plate of the cafeteria's Thanksgiving meal, too. It was pretty good and the servings were big. We were thankful for it; though it just wasn't like home cooked and we missed the green bean casserole with fried onions on top. But we'll have time for that when we get home. For some reason God was showing us this year that it's not about the food - it's about people and we need to really listen and have compassion for our neighbor - our neighbor being anyone within an earshot. My father shared those words with us a few days before he passed away. He wept as he said we need to take care of our neighbor and have more compassion for people. After his 40 years in education as teacher and principal and several years in retirement...his very essence of being had only enough energy to utter those words - the sum of what he found was most important in this life to share before he left us...."we need to take care of our neighbor and have more compassion for people." He even asked why he hadn't done that....but we all knew he had. Tom (Ashley’s dad) felt it was important to get that dinner ready for whoever might come...he was more in tune with what was important than I was... I realized it during our conversations with those lovely ladies from upstairs.
Afterward, we took Ashley over the catwalk to the Shapiro building and up to the 10th floor where we had tried to see the fireworks last July. We then went back to the Brigham toward the transplant clinic area and then down toward the corridors where the neurology area is. On the walls down there are a series of big professional black and white photographs of many of the pioneers of medicine in many different areas such as: the doctor who performed the first organ transplants, the doctor who invented insulin, the doctor who discovered RH factor in babies, the doctor whose work was the forerunner to chemotherapy, the doctors who had breakthroughs in the field of psychiatry and there were many more including a picture of Albert Einstein.
I wish I remembered all their names and the many others on those walls. I found myself on this Thanksgiving Day; thanking God for these walls of people who most I had never heard of that have greatly impacted our lives and the lives of people around the world.
On our worst day, I think we could all be thankful for the doctor who came up with the polio vaccine or those who worked on developing the x-ray, CT scan and MRI machines.
We so often take these fragile bodies for granted until some life threatening condition or event comes along to remind us we aren't as indestructible as we thought. Some days it's worth enlarging our sphere of thankfulness to include those whose life work has greatly benefited us all and to the God who bestowed those gifts of wisdom, knowledge and insight so generously to make it all possible.
Until next time~
Blessings, Nancy
