AFTER 40 YEARS â—½ MARRIAGE
The Miracle
by Marcy Lytle
I’m writing this beside my husband’s bed, where he is literally fighting for his life. I’ve cried, I’ve sobbed, and my heart has ached beyond a capacity I thought was able. I’m praying for that kind of miracle where all of the wrong is made right, overnight. That’s the miracle I want. I know all of our friends are praying for that, as well.
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However, I know that I am going to get a miracle of the best kind from our Father. I once read a story of a rabbi who lost a son with illness, and he wondered one day – which is the greater miracle? Peace in the loss, or the healing of his son? And he concluded that the peace in the loss was the greater of the miracles.
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I told God last night that I don’t want that second and greater miracle. I want Jon to be well, now, and for good. And of course, I didn’t know what we would get. But God is the ultimate giver by nature and he can’t give anything but the best.
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How can the best be all this pain and disease? Some say sickness is not of God, and there were times in my life where that phrase made me feel bad then, if I got sick. Or some have said that sickness is placed on us when we do wrong. Oh my goodness, that’s hurtful to any ears. I have since come to believe with all my heart that suffering IS part of walking with God, because it’s in that suffering that He is with us, in a space where we cannot know him without it.
Jesus suffered. He could have come and just - splat – fell over dead – if it was just about the death. But it was also about the suffering prior to the death, the kind that was brutal and unthinkable. And he did not escape it, but made a way through it with LIFE.
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I’ll never be able to explain the ways of God, but I am told to love them, in his Word. And I don’t really love them, because of the lack of understanding, and because the pain I feel today is greater than the peace I know is available.
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I’m to the end of myself because my body and mind is tired. I can’t think or even process anything, except breathe and raise the blinds to let the light in, sit and cry to ease my broken heart. I didn’t get the kind of miracle I wanted.
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I cannot give thanks enough for friends and family that texted, sent food cards, messaged me and the ones who were, and are, on their knees in the early hours and late at night, for me. I can barely stand and I feel as though I’m in a fog that’s getting thicker.
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And I’m aware that it’s a new day and He is faithful…just look at that sun.
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God is with me and for me and all around me. There was a time I didn’t know that. But I do know it. And that’s the beginning of any kind of miracle that awaits…