Love Story

September 2008

Prayer had been a vital part of my daily life ever since I accepted Jesus as Savior. So when my friend, Carla, confessed, “I felt so awful I couldn’t even pray, the idea frightened me. Yet, that very thing happened to me.

My daughter-in-law Liz was pregnant with our first grandchild. For six months I’d been praying for her and the baby she carried. When my son, John, called to announce the baby’s birth, he quickly interrupted our exclamations of joy. The baby, Katherine, had a serious birth defect and probably wouldn’t live long. “You’d better come as soon as you can.”

Two days later, my husband and I were halfway across the country sitting in a hospital ward holding our infant granddaughter. One week later, she died. Watching my son carry the tiny white coffin to the grave site was the most painful experience of my life.

I felt as though my faith had been shattered. For long periods during the three weeks I stayed to help John and Liz after Katherine’s death, I sat silently before God.  

One day, He spoke inaudibly to me.

“Haven’t I always taken care of you?”

Yes, Lord. You have.

“Haven’t I proven Myself to be trustworthy?”

Yes, Lord. You have.

“Won’t you trust Me now?”

“Yes, Lord, I will.”

Imagine yourself suffering a similar tragedy. Imagine God asked you to trust Him even though you felt certain that He’d deserted you. Every ounce of your being was crying out against it. Still, you chose to follow Him in the dark, crying out like Job: “Though He slay me, yet will I hope in him” (Job 13:15).

Pray meditatively. Although I made a hard choice, I realized that I don’t have the ability to carry it through. Knowing that, I simply sat in God’s presence and wordlessly showed him my miserable feelings. I cried in His presence and sensed that He understood. That, for me, was a kind of prayer.

Communication without words led to communication with words. Hesitantly, I told God that my faith had been decimated and my pat answers ground into the dust. Eventually, I was ready to worship again.

Practice loving God back. He reminded me that He had not changed. He still loved me unconditionally. I could love Him back by allowing my faith to take root again. I still didn’t know why Katherine had a birth defect that resulted in her death except that even human genes have been affected by sin. But, as a friend said when he lost a son:  “I don’t know why. But I know God. And that is enough.

We can be comforted to know that there are other ways to pray when trouble hits. That was brought home to me when I received a phone call from a friend who used a device called a TTD. It allows deaf people to communicate by typing a message that the operator relays audibly.

My friend could communicate with me because she had an interpreter. I realized that, although I hadn’t been aware of Him, the Holy Spirit filled that role for me. Not only was he my intercessor and prayed for me when I couldn’t, He was the one who helped me pray again myself.
I’ve faced other tragedies since the death of my granddaughter. Now, though, I know that—even when words don’t come—I can pray.

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