Trust

I pray for my kids and husband every morning. I have a little calendar with a topic for each day - yesterday's topic was health. As I prayed for God to protect their health, surround them with protection from injury, keep them free from disease, I contemplated the fact that God may not answer those prayers. At least in the way I expect or want Him to.

Ironically, that evening Eva walked into a moving swing and fell backwards on her head. It was one of those moments that occurred in slow motion - I saw what was about to happen and couldn't make my body move fast enough to prevent it. She acted okay - just clingy - and I came home and put her right to bed - honestly not really thinking much about it.

This morning she woke up lethargic - which is so not Eva - my little active jumping bean. She threw up and was running a fever of 102. And immediately my overactive mommy anxiety kicked in. What if she has a concussion? What if she is bleeding internally? What if she has brain damage? What if my spunky little Eva is forever changed?

My memories rushed back to my first year of teaching, and a fear emerged that I never even knew existed. A boy at that school had fallen from a swing and suffered severe brain damge - his entire personality changed, he was mentally incapacitated, he even looked different. I broke down in that moment, fearing the worst for my sweet baby girl, praying over her feverish little body, hoping...

Later at the doctor's, and after throwing up all over me and the floor and the sink, my anxiety eased as I found out she coincidentally had contracted a harmless virus, totally unrelated to the head injury. I don't think I've ever praised God for a virus before!!

While driving home, my thoughts centered around the mystery of prayer ... why pray? Why should I pray for health when there really is no guarantee? Why should I pray for protection? This is something I've struggled with many times in the past. Why does God spare some and not others? I don't have a fully adequate answer to that, and I don't believe I will until I am standing before God in eternity, but someting I have come to terms with is that we are to pray in faith, or more simply, because God asks us to. And then when once we've asked, we rest in the knowledge that God has heard us, and He will answer. As I've witnessed tragedy and death in my own life and the lives of others, I've realized that it may not be the answer we are so desperately seeking. And the only comfort I can find in that is that God, in His infinite wisdom, sometimes chooses a path that makes no logical sense to my limited human brain. All I can do in those moments is choose to trust Him, choose to accept the circumstances, and choose to hope, knowing that He ultimately knows best.

Thank you Jesus that Eva seems to be okay. Thank you for protecting her from more serious injury. I place both my little girls into your care, knowing that they aren't really mine, and you can take much better care of them than me anyways. I trust You wholeheartedly!