My Important Lesson

I have a rare moment, where Ellie is down and quiet  (awe....thankfully!!) and I just made some tea and scones my mother-in-law bought for me.  In reality, I probably should be sleeping.  They keep telling me to sleep when she sleeps.  But in a way, as badly as I need sleep, I also need "me" time to process and reflect and think.  So that is what I am doing.

There is so much that I want to write about Ellie's first two weeks of life...so many things that have happened, and already lessons learned.  (Yesterday was her two week birthday!)  But I feel like I need to take a step back from that to write about a lesson I learned the week before she was born.  It was too profound to not write about it.  And it is so personal I hesitate to even share it with the world...but I hope that it can encourage and help somebody else.

I feel like I learned a much needed lesson before Ellie came....that God does really hear my prayers.

I know for many that is a given.  Even for me, I have known it and preached it and talked about it.  But if I am honest, the last two years I have doubted in my heart how much God really does hear my prayers.  I have known in my head that He does...but doubted it in my heart.

You see, go back two years.  Caleb had flared up and I prayed for healing daily.  I wept and cried out and asked God to perform a miracle.  Just like I had asked for my mom, uncle, friends, among many who had suffered illnesses.  And God seemed to be saying "no"....that is until the church prayed over him.  It was a simple Sunday, and at the end of the service they encircled around Caleb and I in the church, and we all asked God to please give Caleb relief and to heal him.  And guess what?!  Truly miraculously, it happened!

I was sooooo ecstatic!  I praised God, along with many others!

But then, doubt crept into my own heart without me even knowing it.  Anytime I felt the need for prayers, I would often say to Caleb, "We should have people pray."  I found that I was trusting the effectiveness of other people's prayers more than my own.  I mean, after all, I had prayed for healing for many people and all of them died.  And now my husband was healed after other people prayed.

Now, in my head, I knew that this was not a truly accurate evaluation.  I tried not to believe the lie that God heard other people's prayers more than my own.  But if I am honest, in the quiet of my heart, I wanted to trust my prayers worked, but I doubted.

All this did was create striving in my heart....from lack of trust in God and His love for me and His power.

Well....the week before Ellie was born, I had a big lesson to learn.  And I will try to remember it for all the days and years ahead of us, as Ellie grows up.

It was a Monday, exactly one week before her due date.  Caleb came home and as he prayed before we ate dinner, he prayed that God would prevent him from flaring up.  This struck me as odd because on a normal day he simply thanks God for his good health.  So when he finished the prayer, I quickly asked, "Are your joints okay?" And he started stretching his hip.  And my heart sunk.  He told me he felt stiff in his hip and there was some fluid there.

The crazy thing is that I just had so much peace.  And I told him, "Okay, let me pray again.  God is in this.  He knows."  So I prayed.  And I know it began with, "Lord, we are just two simple people unworthy to ask, but we do...." and I prayed that Caleb wouldn't flare up.

Now to understand what I was asking...go back a year.  Caleb told me he had a little stiffness in his hip one night and the next day he could hardly walk when he got home from work.

We decided not to tell people until we knew really what was going on.  After we went to bed that night, I was up tossing and turning.  And about 2am I got up, and me and God had a little chat.  I told Him I really needed to know everything would be okay if he did flare up.  I needed my heart not to be anxious as we awaited the arrival of our little girl.  I was still up when Caleb got up to go to work.

We didn't tell anybody.  But the two of us simply prayed all day.  As anxiety came over me at times, I would remind myself that God already heard my prayers and I didn't need to worry.  I just tried trusting God all day.

And Caleb came home no worse than the day before!  The following day he came back a little better even.  But the whole week he was somewhat stiff...but he NEVER flared up!!  It was a miracle!!  That has never happened that way before!

By the time Ellie was born, although he still had some fluid in his hip, we weren't as concerned.  While at the hospital, we did have to monitor him and make sure he got his rest.  But God protected and healed him!

And today he is feeling great!

PRAISE GOD!!!!!

I feel like in many ways, that was one of the greatest lessons I could have learned during that time.  I cannot tell you how many times I have been asked, "What if he flares when you are pregnant?"  (Or things like that.)  It has fed my desire for control.  When I got pregnant I had to kill those thoughts completely in order to not worry.  And it almost happened....but it didn't!  God heard my prayer.  I didn't need to have everybody else pray, and trust their prayers more than mine. God heard my little prayer, from the depths of my heart and with whatever faith I had.  And He showed Caleb and Ellie and I favor, but protecting her daddy's health the very time she made her entrance into the world.

God is with us.  He loves us.  He hears us.

He hears me.