Fear not for I am with you



Should be enough. It really should.



except these dreams are so big. Can I trust that you are bigger. Are you really so big and still you care about me. Still you love me. Still you use me for your good.



I'm not worthy, but I am yours. and if this is your will,

then lead me Lord



and give me the wisdom to follow,

the courage to move my feet

and the faith I'll need for the journey.

as i read through a few friend's blogs this afternoon i've come to the realization of just how real pain is in our lives. Be it pain in the lives around us as challenging circumstances threaten the safety and happiness of our loved ones or the brokeness and hurt that surfaces in our own lives.

Here I am; two challenges set before me. The first is to trust past what I feel, the second is to feel and to trust.

My first lesson and challenge came from the chest I painted this weekend. It didn't turn out how I initially desired, so I had two choices, I could continue to make adaptions and add layers until it yielded a desirable or acceptable product, or I could whitewash it and start over. In retrospect I wonder, could this be how our hearts are to the Lord. Sometimes the artist can adjust and realign, (and as life is a process I would imagine this to be a highly utilized option). Somtimes however, the coats of pain are so piled up that we need to be stripped down. Although from this side of the artistry we see brokeness and pain, the good artist understands the work ahead of him when he sets out and only strips a piece as far as is good and when it is beneficial. We must learn to trust, not to understand. and no, brokeness isn't usually convientently timed. Feeling hurt doesn't weaken my character, or defile who I am. Its okay to feel hurt.

My second challenge comes from what started as a confession. A boy telling an audience that he doesn't pray for his painfully dying sister. Praying would mean identifying and feeling her pain. Her pain was too great, however in that audience he was compelled. Compelled to feel her pain, and the pain of others. He was compelled to feel that he would be more compassionate and pray with an effectiveness only achieved in intercession (praying on behalf of another).

Through brokeness our pain could lead to the effectivesness that could change more than just our prayers.



To trust in a way that I cannon see; that's what faith must be

I don't want to be healed. I want to be loved.

I stand on this rock while the waves crash around me
The cold wind blows all around and I feel as though I've lost

When you hold me in your arms
That's when my world makes sense
Even when the waves crash around me
I know that you're still there

...and for some reason, that makes everything okay

...prayer changes things/prayer changes me.

I woke up around 8am. The sun was shinning with no homework to cloud the day. The start to a fantastic day. A fantastic day, that I couldn't get out of bed for. Although all around me was beauty, all I felt was pain. In that morning; those mornings, all I had to do was awaken to experience the pain I felt as I drifted off to sleep the night before, hoping somehow that it would disappear as I slept.

Growing up in church, I've been told over and over that prayer changes things. When God's people pray people are delivered from the messes they find themselves in. Living in a dirty world, its hard to stay clean sometimes. Learning to walk isn't a clean endeavor, and we've all fallen. However in these mornings I began to notice something. No matter how hard I prayed, I still experienced the pain, It took me a long time to recognize the deeper pattern that had been hiding beneath the surface.

When prayer didn't change my circumstances, prayer changed me. Through prayer I found the strength I needed to roll out of bed and get myself ready for another day. Another day to learn through the pain I felt from the view of my wheelchair. Through prayer I learned to see things differently and I was able to learn lessons otherwise ignored.

A lesson I was never taught in Sunday School. As the song goes "sometimes He calms the storm and other times He calms His child". I don't understand the way He moves, but I'm glad He still moves. And I'm glad He moves with grace and love through, and in His children.

It was a cold Minnesota night, and I was feeling pretty blah. Nothing much to do but fold laundry and talk to my aunt. (That conversation changed my life.) As we talked and I shared what was going on, how life was in a wheelchair was different, and the difficulties that therefore I faced that I had never before even considered; something welled up inside her. Something about her faith in the Lord. She prayed for me and she really believed that the Lord was going to heal me.

She believed...not me. At least that's how it was at first. She prayed and I doubted God. This was yet another prayer that would end in disappointment, so why bother to believe. I'd already tried that. However, something inside of me questioned my doubt. Did I really believe that God was God no matter where I was? Did I believe that the God that was present when I went to church and was surrounded by 300 people praying was the same God that was there when I was folding laundry in my room, physically alone? It was easy to say that I did. But when the rubber met the road, I was off.

So I laid it down. I stopped waiting for my 'one-day' ('one-day' I would be healed and hundreds of people would be around me to witness the goodness of our Lord. 'one-day' I would get up out of the wheelchair and walk in freedom) and believed that day could be the day.

By the end of my aunt's prayer, I had begun to move about my room. I began to jump and dance without fear, without pain and without collapsing! Although I held my doubts at first, they were soon vanished as I realized just how miraculously I had been healed.

Within days I went running for miles upon miles. I was gone for a couple hours and returned feeling great. I ran a 8 minute mile and was still walking to tell about it. Completely and miraculously healed.