Caring and Surviving

I'm learning a lot about what it means to be a caregiver.  I'm learning, hopefully, how to reach out to people in similar circumstances.  The strangest thing about it for me is that I don't know what to ask for when people ask how they can help.  Part of that may be because the little child in me wants somebody to make this all go away while the adult in me knows I have to keep on putting one foot in front of the other.  I'm learning things about myself that aren't so pretty but I'm finding traits emerging that I didn't know I had.  All these things point to God's hand at work in my life in the midst of this horrible trial. I long for the day when I can enjoy the blessing of hindsight, the gift of looking back and seeing what God has done - how this looks on the other side.  

I feel so guilty when I find myself sighing from fatigue as I walk into that hospital again and make the hike up to my husband's room.  At least I'm going home to my own bed while he has to stay in the hospital and deal with the struggles of recovery, depression, discouragement.  I deal with those same things, too, but have the advantage of seeing the many signs of a miraculous recovery.  While I inwardly sigh about making this walk on day 31 of this journey, I can rejoice that God has and is indeed healing my husband in miraculous ways.  I hear his nurses using this "M-word" and know that God is being glorified, that the power of prayer is witnessing to the power of God's presence in our lives in a personal, intimate way.  Healing is real.  God is real.  Doctors, with all their knowledge, training and expertise owe their skill to the Giver of this knowledge.  I was so blessed and will never forget hearing my husband's doctor ask for prayers on our long night of waiting 31 days ago.  God is being glorified.

There's a passage in Scripture that always makes me shudder a little bit when I read it.  For me, it's one of those "good-for-you" things that you'd rather not have to deal with or be reminded of:  (from Romans 5:3-5) Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.  The transforming power of God is perfect, good and loving but it is most definitely not always easy.  Yes, there are times when it seems he miraculously transforms us; but it seems to me that most of my transformation has been the kind that I think of when I read the verse above; the transforming that is accomplished by the Lord's loving and necessary pruning of my unfruitful "branches".  I do know, however, that on the other side of this journey I will be able to look back and give thanks for the fruit that was produced by all this pruning.  

Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. (James 1:2-4)

"And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (Matthew 28:20)