First of all, thank you so much for reading along (or contributing, if you are a MM contributor) with Marriage Monday and a HUGE thank you to our precious friend, E-Mom C H R Y S A L I S for being our most gracious hostess!
Well, this month is a little different regarding our topic. Actually, there is no designated topic this month...we're keeping it simple in order that everyone is able to spend the weekend (and days leading up to it) in preparation for Resurrection Sunday. In light of that, it's pretty simple for me what to write about...just that...the days leading up to Resurrection Sunday.
I penned some words in the last few days regarding the "goings on" in my family, specifically with my husband and my sister-in-love (I love that sound much better than "in law"...thanks to my sweet bloggy sister, Trish at A Joyful Heart. She has a "mother-in-love"!). If you haven't read my post titled "Breaking the Silence & Some Other Urgent Prayer Needs", you might want to read that first so that the rest of this post will make better sense. At any rate, I have been doing so much reflection in the last few days with regard to Rob's hip surgery on Friday before last and with my sister-in-love's colon cancer diagnosis the day before his surgery.
Needless to say, there has been an incredibly HUGE range of emotions that has manifested in my life (and the lives of others) since last week. Rob's surgery had been scheduled for a good bit of time, but in the scheduling, never would we dream that our sweet Julie would receive the news that she did Thursday before last. Rob and I had prayed for many weeks leading up to his surgery. We prayed that it would be just like his right hip replacement in May of '08....an absolute breeze. We prayed that recovery would be quick and that no one would be inconvenienced any more than necessary.
WOW...were our prayers ever so shallow. It's amazing to me still how we didn't know that the whole time that we were praying, this nasty thing called "cancer" was growing inside our sweet Julie's body. My first reaction in my heart was "Lord, if only I had known, I could have prayed more, I could have prepared, I could have been on guard and ready to receive this news".
Funny, why do we wait until we're in the midst of a crisis to have the gall, the absolute nerve, to ask the Lord...the King of Kings, the one who died on a miserable cross to save our sins....to have given us more of a "warning" prior to receiving bad news?
What I do know is that in James 5:16, the Lord has already given us everything we need to know about where our prayer life should be:
"Confess your trespasses to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much."
It wasn't that I had not prayed before receiving this news. But I'll tell you, the best litmus test to tell you how "fervent" that you are is to have news like what our family received to hit you from left field. I love talking to the Lord. I love praying. Up until Thursday, March 25, 2010, I considered my prayer life to be "pretty good" by my standards. That's the problem....my standard is not the Lord's standard. I want to have my prayers be a part of the "avails much" part of the text above. I want to be so deeply into my prayer and communion with the Lord that my response turns from "Why Lord...Oh, woe is me Lord" to "What next Lord? Show me Your will Lord!".
Rob's Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis attacks and diagnosis didn't catch our great God by surprise in 1979. Nor was He astonished that our sweet Julie would come to face the trial of cancer. But He did promise in Philippians 4:13 that:
"I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me."
Our God is great and our God is good. He never sleeps or slumbers. He IS going to see my sweet husband through recovery and healing in his hips. He IS going to see our sweet Julie through treatment and surgery for colon cancer. He IS the same yesterday, today and forever.
I heard some of the sweetest words the other day that I think I've ever heard in my marriage. "Jen, I want to pray more than I ever have....and there is nothing in the world that I wouldn't do for this family". Thank you Lord for a praying husband. Thank you Lord for giving Rob and I the same prompting by the Holy Spirit. Thank you Lord for showing us the areas of our prayer life that need to be strengthened like a mighty fort against any attack of the Enemy or any bad news that may come to our family.
Forever in His service,
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