Warm Hands & Anointed Whispers

I’m a fixer of things. I want to make pain or hurt or suffering go away. I want to hug those hurting and tell them it will be okay. I’d like to believe that I really do believe that - that God WILL make everything okay.

And most days I think deep down I do believe that. But when I’m face-to-face with suffering, unimaginable grief, extreme physical pain, and unbearable loneliness, my faith trembles, my mind asks questions, and I find myself in need of revisiting the anchors that hold my life and faith.

I find myself searching and asking questions such as God, are you here? Where are you?

I’ve become more sensitive in my usage of the “Don’t worry, it will be okay” sentences that once so easily flowed from my lips. They can be hurtful, not helpful.

Will it be okay? When will it be okay? How long, oh Lord, how long?

When you’re a person who wants to fix thing, to offer solutions, to assure others that things will get better, it’s an extremely disturbing experience to realize that sometimes people will go through a whole lot more suffering before a change in circumstances occurs.

We can offer things to Jesus in prayer and we can still physically suffer.

Even as I try to write this blog post, if for no other reason that to make sense of questions and desperation and feelings of helplessness that companions with me these days, I know God is good. I’ve experienced his goodness. But if I’m being honest, I’ve begun to wonder about the metrics we use to know if we’ve experienced God’s goodness.

Sometimes I wish that God would come more speedily to help, and then I remind myself that God’s ways are not our ways and that I, in my limited (very limited) understanding, don’t see all there is to see or know all there is to know.

And then there are these moments, ones not often witnessed or experienced except by those who get close to the elderly, the sick and the dying.

Moments of holding the hand of a Sister who lived 50 years in the Convent but who now lives in long-term care because several strokes have left her blind and paralyzed, unable to walk on her own. Her only ask of me: Whenever you’re here, please come and hold my hand for a short while, it eases my loneliness.

I’ve wondered about the depths of loneliness one must feel when they’ve spent the bulk of their life in community and then are no longer in it. I have no idea, but I feel the ache of longing as I hold her hand. I want to fix this! But Jesus is the Saviour, not me, and so I ask him to come close in ways that Sister knows she is not alone.

There are moments of playing the hymn I Need The Every Hour and becoming a witness to and participant in some of the sweetest worship I have ever known. Worship from the heart of a man who has loved Jesus most of his life, and even though his body and health continues to decline, worship flows from his lips in an anointed whisper.

Oh friends, I want to fix so many things and I have felt my humanness deeply. This ancient prayer Lord, make haste to help us is my daily prayer. I need Jesus. I can’t do this work well without him.

We all need Jesus. He is our only hope.

Carmen