Resting Place

I have to start by saying that I don’t know where to start.

I may not say this well.

I’m in that place between public and private, and I am still chewing on this, pondering.

For the second time in six months, I went to bed last night with the word “cancer” hanging over my head.

For the second time in six months, I will go to bed tonight with praises for the word “benign”.

The first time, I had moments of tears and worry, but I can truly say that I knew the “peace that passes understanding”, the absolute assurance that God was working, He was in it, He had purpose for either result.

This time was different.

I knew fear.

Then my husband, my pastor, and a dear friend who has walked this path herself anointed me with oil and prayed for me.

Then I knew nothing.

Silence.

Which is sort of like peace, but not exactly.

As I have prayed the last few months for the ladies on the retreat weekend, God spoke very little.    I felt we knew few specific things to pray over those women. 

We prayed anyway, and I finally decided that was the point.

“Will you,” God seemed to ask, “ praise Me, worship Me, seek My face, even if I choose  not to let you in on anything I’m doing?”

The last 24 hours, I have walked that question, not for other people, but for myself and my family.

Would I praise Him, worship Him, seek His face, even if He chose not the let me in on what He was doing?

In Ephesians 3, Paul writes a prayer for the church, that we would be strengthened by the power of Christ dwelling in our hearts through faith, and that we would know the wide, high, long, and deep love of Christ that surpasses knowledge.

His love for me goes beyond knowledge of my circumstances, beyond my future, whatever it holds.

Christ, the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow, is holy and good, and faithful.

Even if the news had not been good.

I don’t feel any different than I did this morning.  I still feel like God is being quiet.

But in the stillness, I know I am being refined.

“These {trials} have come so that your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may prove genuine and may result in praise, glory, and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.”

1 Peter 1:7 (NIV)