It was a brutally hot summer day. The air was thick and sticky. The kids had convinced me to take them to the pool to catch a break. I thought that we’d be able to make it a quick trip since I was volunteering that day at church. Silly me, I’d been having so much fun that time slipped away from me.
So we rushed home, showered up and we jumped in the car. At some point during all of this hustle and bustle, my phone rang, but I was too preoccupied to hear it.
As I began to drive to church, I noticed, both, that my car was on empty and that I had a voicemail message on my phone. Pulling over, filling the car, I listened to the message. It was from a friend. An unexpected call but she was emotional and needed to talk. My heart sank at the thought that I wasn’t there for her right when she needed it. I immediately called her back.
She’d just heard back that week that her sweet little daughter, who’d been in and out of the hospital with brain cancer, had some re-occurrences on the new scans. She was heart broken, but that wasn’t the reason she’d called. She called and asked me if she wasn’t praying hard enough; if her faith wasn’t strong enough, if she wasn’t religious enough.
As I sit and type this out, tears spring to my eyes just thinking of it. In a moment so vulnerable, she reached out to me. Me. Asking me if she was good enough, adequate enouugh. If somehow she wasn’t cutting God’s list of prayers that He answers.
“Jayne“, I said, “God knows you, He knows your heart. He knows that you are afraid but he knows that you turn to him, that you are learning to trust him. God knows exactly where you are and the only thing he’s asking you to do is come to him. So if that’s what you’re doing, you’re right where you are supposed to be”.
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I’d been working most of the morning and all of a sudden I felt an urge to call her. I dialed and this time it was my turn to leave a message. “Hey, hun. I haven’t talked to you in a while. I haven’t seen any updates so I don’t know where Emma‘s at right now. But I want you to know that I’m praying for you and Mike and Emma and your whole family. Please Please let me know if you need anything.”
2 seconds after I hung up , she called me back. This time, her voice was confidant, happy, light. After hearing the latest news a few weeks ago which wasn’t good, I expected her to be sorrowful. I expected that I’d feel like I needed to tiptoe around the conversation. But this wasn’t the case. She was good. She was at peace. She was full. Of love, joy, calm, but most importantly, faith.
As I sat and listened to this woman so full of trust and hope and faith that God is working in her life, I couldn’t help but wonder if I would be the same. Would I have that faith? Would I be so confidant and completely abandoned and unafraid? Would I place all of my eggs in His basket if my own child were fighting brain cancer?
I couldn’t help but to repeat over and over how awesome this is. How awesome that she is so at peace, so believing–knowing and trusting. How awesome it is that God meets us right where we are. That He’s so in love with us that he picks us up, dusts off our worries and carries us. My friend, who only a few months ago, felt that she wasn’t praying enough, began to trust Him. But what I love more about this is that she’s getting to know Him. She’s recognizing when he shows up to give her something, be it a phone call from a friend, a 2 minute conversation in an elevator with a stranger and many other things. In her don’t-know-what’s-coming-next circumstances, she sees him, knows him, loves him and trusts him.