Have you ever been looking down when you started to cry?
It's a really strange experience to have tears falling off your cornea and not off your eyelashes or from the corner of your eye.
Oh the baggage that I have to sort through when hearing about other people's medical issues... and it has nothing to do with them and everything to do with just working through my own pain again.
It's really hard to hear people pray for God's mercy. Not because I don't want God to grant those people mercy, but because God's mercy is what I was praying for during that last week in the hospital. Did I want Nathan to be healed? So much. But what I wanted most was for him to be happy. For him to no longer be in constant pain. And so I prayed for God's mercy... no matter what that looked like... and I got the path that was harder. I wish He'd chosen to just heal Nathan. I wish that none of it had ever happened, because while I do think God was merciful to Nathan, to me... It's also still incredibly hard.
So often we think of mercy as a rescue. And honestly, in a way, Nathan was rescued. But what was a mercy for him is so much sorrow for us. I said that I would give up anything so that he wouldn't be hurting like that... I gave up him. I gave up my life with him... not that the choice was really mine to make, but that's been at the heart of my comfort through these months... If I'd had a choice to never see him again but know that he was cured, I would have said yes. That's not really so much different from what happened, only I *know* he isn't hurting any more without any shadow of a doubt and he won't ever hurt again. That is the eternal comfort of heaven. I don't have to worry about him anymore, I just have to deal with my own loss.. and my happiness in exchange for his happiness? ...well that's something I agreed to a long time ago.
And besides that, it isn't forever. I may be in captivity for 70 years but the Lord still has plans for me. Plans to prosper me and not to harm me. Plans to give me hope and a future.
Though I sorta hope that those 70 years are a metaphor and that the prospering future would start tomorrow. Or, barring that, Tuesday.
Prospering-Future-Tuesday has a nice ring to it. Heck of a lot better than Cornea-Dripping-Sunday.
Ah, but even in the captivity:
ReplyDeleteThis is what the LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon:"Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce.Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease. Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the LORD for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper."
Thanks, Sadie. That is actually really comforting. :)
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