When We are Sick. When We are Tired of Being Sick. A Prayer by Ann Voskamp

Saying “I’m praying for you” on social media seems too easy and even insincere at times. Is the thought of you and your struggle really a prayer? Did I couch my thought in “Dear God” and “Amen?” If God wants us in the secret room is Facebook a little like crying out loud in the temple for everyone to hear?

Friend, your daughter is in the hospital recovering from surgery. It didn’t go the way we hoped it might. I want you to know I’m on my knees. I need you to know I’m circling your name. I’m writing her name. I’m lifting up your weary husband. I’m knowing the heart of the sibling left at home with caregivers patched together. I’m thinking of your puppy who doesn’t understand where you all are and why you are gone so long. You’re so tired. Your body hurts. Your mind is racing. You cannot rest for even a minute from this advocacy. The minutes and hours have become days and nights where time has no meaning. Every single thing you had written on your calendar doesn’t matter at all anymore. The world is moving fast and lives go on, but you are there. She is there. I want to come to you. I want to sit with you. I want to hold your hands and pray face to face and heart to heart. I’m asking Him now to wrap you up in the comfort of knowing how incredibly held you and your family are. I love you. He loves you more.

Lord, yeah, we do get sick and tired of being sick.
We get fed up with the nausea and keeping nothing down.
We get shell shocked by the cancer at every turn, the chronic that wears us down to acute agony, the hospitals and doctors and appointments; the waiting rooms that have us wildly waiting on You,
mad with the waiting for You to show up and do something, heal someone, free everyone now.

And You cup our faces; come so close we can feel the warmth of You on our weariness and You breathe relief upon us: “My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made *perfect* in weakness…
Your present sufferings; hard times are not one drop compared to the Niagara of glory and good times I’ve got coming for you *forever*…
Instead of trusting on your own strength or wits in the midst of all this, come trust on Me totally—which is a good idea since I’m the God *who raises the dead!”

The warmth of God is closer to us in sickness than in health.
The comfort of God heals our soul… regardless of our health.
And the grace of God touches us with the heat of the healthiest love –a love that death can’t touch, that will enflame us through life without end, forever and ever; into eternal living, Amen.

In the name of the only One who loved us to death and back to the real *forever* life,
Amen.

A prayer by Ann Voskamp. I return to it often.

Photography by Cindee Snider Re. Used with permission.