Remembering

     Well, the New Year is almost upon us.  Hard to believe, isn't it, that another year has come and gone?  And for many of us, what a year it has been.  Full of great joys but also great sorrows.  A year of challenges we could not have imagined... but also a year of graces we had not anticipated.  We have experienced God's relentless strength in the hardest of times as well as His utterly undeserved mercy and favor.
     So much of our year has been shaped by Janie's accident, and you know what, I think that is a good thing.  Because I never want to forget.  I never want to forget God's tender but powerful presence in that ICU with us.  I never want to forget those moments in the middle of the night when all was darkness save the lights of machines keeping her alive, and all was quiet save the constant beep and buzz and occasional alarm of ventilator and myriad monitors.  Because God was in that room.  So real, so palpably present, I felt I could reach out and touch Him.
     But I didn't need to... because He continually had His arms wrapped around me... and around our daughter... and around my husband... and around our family... and around all who entered that room.  He was there.  He was real.  And He was powerful and awesome and big... and yet so gentle, so sustaining, so constant.  No, I don't ever want to forget.
     Nor do I want to forget the miracle He wrought in Janie's healing.  From hopeless to "prisoners of hope."  From still and helpless and unconscious and unable to do one thing in this world for herself... to walking and talking and laughing and eating and going to school and celebrating Christmas with all our family.  From death to life.
     That's what God can do.  That is the God we serve.  May we never ever forget that He can do the impossible.  And that He is the God who rolls away stones.  Stones not only of sickness, but stones of addiction and depression and exhaustion and separation and desperation.  He can heal relationships as well as bodies and souls.
     And in those hard moments where the healing does not come in this life... well, then He is still more than enough.  He is the One who came and entered our hard, dark world and who fully knows and understands all our sorrows and fears and unmet desires.  He is with us in them... right there.  Just as He was with us in that ICU.  And He is moving and redeeming even when we cannot see evidence of it.  Just as He was healing Janie in His own good time... even as she slept unconscious and unaware.
     She had her healing on this side of heaven.  We will all have times where that healing, that ultimate restoration may not come till the other side.  But in that gap, we trust.  That is our faith.  That even when we cannot see or feel or understand...  God does. God is there.  God is working.  God has a plan.  And somehow, someway, it will all be ultimately glorious.
      We can know and believe that... because after the horror of the cross came the joy of the empty tomb.  The stone was rolled away, and we serve a resurrected Lord.  From the absolute worst the world could ever imagine, God brought the joyous best we could never begin to dream even in our wildest dreams.
     So wherever you are right now--whether in the storm or the calm or the gap between, remember His faithfulness to you in the past. Stop and recount those blessings, those times of help, those gifts of His sustaining presence.  And then choose to trust Him with the future.  He has totally got it.  Totally.
     Hope you don't mind if I continue on this theme a bit more the next day or two.  As my family often complains, I never seem to be at a lack for words!  Sorry.  But there's an Ebenezer we to discuss, Lord wiling.  Till then, to God be the glory... for all He has done, for all He is doing, and for all He will do.