All You Ever Wanted

A small intermission from the dreaming series. I decided to rewrite the post intended for today, “Dream With People”. What I originally wrote was shallow. The last thing I want to do is offer you the same ole thing that’s already out there. Hopefully, it will be worth the wait.

Meanwhile… I wanted to post something. So, I thought I would share a chapter from Even A Sparrow: A Three-Year Story. Last year I released a new album called Even A Sparrow. The songs were written during the last three years of my late husband’s illness and battle with cancer. The book tells the stories behind the songs.

This is Chapter 7, All You Ever Wanted. You can listen to the song by clicking the title.

In the last chapter I talked about the beautiful result of choosing to hide in God. In this chapter I’d like to share how the Lord exposed the places I use to hide from him.

When Jonathan was first diagnosed with malignant tumors I began asking God a lot of questions about healing. For fifteen years I prayed for a miraculous healing from his benign tumor, but it only progressed. I was learning—I still am learning—that intercession is coming into agreement with God’s heart on an issue rather than me praying my will into existence. So, I asked God to teach me to pray and come into alignment with his heart for Jonathan’s healing.

I feel like God gave me two specific words at that time. First, he told me to care for Jonathan in his time of need. Second, God told me he would finish what he started in Jonathan. I’ll be completely honest. Although I was thankful for God’s word, it was not what I wanted to hear. I wanted to hear something along the lines of if you fast for 40 days, I will heal Jonathan. If you pray this scripture everyday, I will heal Jonathan. If you pour a pint of anointing oil over his head, I will heal Jonathan. I wanted to hear instructions to follow from the Lord that would ensure Jonathan’s miraculous healing. I’m pretty sure I would have shamelessly done the miracle hokey pokey if it existed. But, that’s not what God was saying, and I began to wrestle with God over the issue. I’ve been trained since Sunday school that God heals the sick, and that’s what I had faith for. Instead, I was hearing the Lord say, “Trust my plan for Jonathan.” Trying to adjust to God’s word and plan was a true and continual struggle.

Caring for Jonathan in his time of need was both a joy and pain. This was my husband: I loved him, and it was my joy to care for him. However, watching my husband dwindle down under the heavy hand of cancer was the worst thing I have ever experienced. Even today, it is the wound in me most resistant to healing—it wants to fester, it wants to be offended. The only thing that made the pain bearable was watching God finish what he started in Jonathan.

In chapter five I shared that the big miracle of the Three-Year Story was Jonathan’s return to God. For seventeen out of our nearly nineteen years of marriage, Jonathan was a prodigal son. It was a hard, bitter turn from God, too. It wasn’t just a I-don’t-believe-in-God turn. It was a you’re-an-idiot-if-you-do-believe type of turn. Trouble was, not only did I believe in God, I believe he is everything. You can imagine the tension in our home over those seventeen years. Even so, as mentioned, the love of God displayed toward our family and the provision that he lavishly poured on us was undeniable and unescapable to Jonathan. When he surrendered to the great big love of Jesus Christ, he surrendered willingly and out of belief. That was how God finished the work he started in Jonathan.

It was incredible to spend seventeen months praying together, worshiping together, and going to church together, but, again, I wrestled with the absence of Jonathan’s physical healing the entire time. I would have weeks of resolve and trusting, but then a wave of fear would come, followed by a wave of disbelief. During the waves of fear and disbelief, I would hide. My hiding looked like trying to cope by pridefully and stubbornly arguing with the Lord. I wasn’t humbly asking the Lord questions. I was demanding my way and trying to control the situation. I would take a deep breath and rest once again in God’s words and his care. Then, another wave of fear and disbelief would come. There was a lot of back and forth between resting and trying. It was nauseating and it added to the hardness of the season.

Well into his diagnoses and treatments, and when time left with Jonathan was short, I sat at the grand piano in my church’s sanctuary, exhausted. I sat there for a long, long time trying to figure out what to say to the Lord. I had nothing to say. All I had were groans and tears. I began playing and after some time, I heard the Lord singing over me, “All I’ve ever wanted is what’s behind the veil.” The wording is a little weird, but that is what I heard. It was both a statement and question. He was saying, “Everything I want is behind the veil”, and, at the same time, he was asking me, “What’s behind the veil?” In that moment, the peace of Christ washed over me and pulled back the veil of trying.

I realized that God didn’t care what I brought to him, he simply wanted me to bring it to him instead of using it as a hiding place. Also, more than ever before, I understood the difference between wrestling with the Lord and hiding from him behind my desires, my prayers, and my preferences. Fellowship and intimacy can occur when we wrestle with God. He can handle our questions, the doubts we have, and the fears that invade us. Fellowship cannot occur when we hide from God by letting our fears and doubts become dividers.

It took much more faith for me to believe that God wasn’t going to heal Jonathan in a get-up-out-of-the-bed-and-walk way. Honestly, there are still days I have to choose not to be offended by God and to trust the way he held Jonathan in his hands. On those days, I come out of my hiding places and get under his covering—a better covering. One of the most beautiful things about the Gospel is that not only are we rescued from our insufficient coverings, but we are also given a better covering through Jesus (Heb 12:24).