Waiting

 

For every infirm man healed instantly as he waits to enter the Pool of Bethesda, someone else will spend 40 years in the desert waiting to enter the promised land. 

Twenty years ago we first prayed for a miracle, but healing did not come. There have been a few reprieves but illness was always lurking. For a decade now there have been no reprieves. For years daily prayers and pleadings for healing have been sent heavenward, but healing still hasn't come....

We sat in the psychiatrist office. The discussion is brutally honest, reaching the most tender corners of our hearts. It's difficult but necessary to hear: "we cannot fix this, we can try and manage it, but it is unlikely to really improve"

Deeply painful words said with the an unbridled amount of compassion. My heart had actually accepted these words years ago. I don't know the day my prayers changed from asking for miracles, to the asking of courage and that I would not be bitter.

Acceptance isn't giving up on faith, its a surrender to trust that the plan for us includes Grant's battle with severe, complex mental illness and always will. We will be guided through it, but not healed from it.

How's he doing?? I feel heartbroken when people ask this and even more devastated when they don't. He's not well. The depth and berth  of that statement is hard to explain. The intensity of illness can change from inconvenience to life threatening in a moment. Emotions are felt with ferocity that has to be witnessed to be believed. Rock bottom has a basement and functional looks like flying into the stratosphere.

Right now its most like standing on the beach and watching the fog banks roll about, sometimes there is a beautiful ocean vista, other times you can still see blue sky if you look straight up but most of the time the grey mist excludes your surroundings. It breaks my heart to acknowledge the depth of his suffering.

I walk a tightrope between adoring wife, caregiver and protector. His tightrope is much higher and thinner than mine. We both need help, but sometimes the price for that help is something we cannot afford. Unsolicited advice is always judgement. Ignorance can lead to misinformation and the perpetuation of stigma. No Karen, he is not a psychopath or sociopath. Confidentiality is paramount. It is our story to share, not yours to gossip about. If I have trusted you enough to stand on our sacred ground, please don't defile that.  We have been deeply wounded by this more often that I want to admit.

So here we are somewhere in the middle of our "40 years of waiting in the wilderness" just like so many of you. The instant miracle was not to be. So we walk on waiting on Him. Our faith isn't in a mighty miracle, its in the moments when we feel heard understood and included.

Elder Jeffery R Holland, A member of the quorum of the twelve apostles in our church recently said this in our General Conference.

Yes, God can provide miracles instantaneously, but sooner or later we learn that the times and seasons of our mortal journey are His and His alone to direct.” He administers that calendar to every one of us individually. For every infirm man healed instantly as he waits to enter the Pool of Bethesda, someone else will spend 40 years in the desert waiting to enter the promised land. For every Nephi and Lehi divinely protected by an encircling flame of fire for their faith, we have an Abinadi burned at a stake of flaming fire for his. And we remember that the same Elijah who in an instant called down fire from heaven to bear witness against the priests of Baal is the same Elijah who endured a period when there was no rain for years and who, for a time, was fed only by the skimpy sustenance that could be carried in a raven’s claw. By my estimation, that can’t have been anything we would call a “happy meal.”

The point? The point is that faith means trusting God in good times and bad, even if that includes some suffering until we see His arm revealed in our behalf. That can be difficult in our modern world when many have come to believe that the highest good in life is to avoid all suffering, that no one should ever anguish over anything. But that belief will never lead us to “the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.”

Listening to Elder Holland's words I felt heard and understood.