I didn't say it.... - Karen Kay Smith

This is too good not to share. It is a blog post from Mundane Faithfulness entitled “How to Live Out Long Term Suffering With Others”. This spoke a word that my heart feels all the time…

“Dear Church, dear people who love Jesus, dear friends, this is a message from the depths of my heart. It might sound harsh, but I mean it with so much love: Stop it. Stop. Trying. To. Fix. Each. Other….Our job is to love. Listen. Support. And that might be it…Kara wasn’t healed on this earth. It wasn’t because Kara was a sinner. (Of course she was a sinner, but that wasn’t why her healing didn’t happen here.) It wasn’t because she didn’t have enough faith. Kara wasn’t healed on this earth because that is the story God wrote for her….Please do not say Jesus is going to heal you, I just know it.

Have you tried this?

Maybe if you had more faith.

Please.

Please do listen. Hear their heart. Take them a meal or a coffee. Send them a text that says, I know this is hard and I love you. Pick up their kids on the hard days. Choose them in their suffering.”

“…can you imagine being the person who so desperately wants a miracle but it’s not handed to them? They do not need our reminder that God can do anything. They know, and they want it so badly it’s painful. But if that is not the story God is writing for them, and if that miracle doesn’t come, they are stuck in the day to day. How do I do this? Today? How do I honor God in this path that I don’t want? That I want to punch in the face? I am not grateful for this suffering! Do you hear me, God? I want the miracle. And if it doesn’t come, they say, Not my will, but yours. They bow their heads and choose another day of gratefulness and joy even in the midst of their suffering.”

And this my friends….echoes my heart. We don’t want people to try to fix our suffering. We want people to listen and love. And not fixing is hard…because I used to be a fixer as well. I hope that when I encounter others now…I’m not a fixer. My pastor told me one day…Karen ask people if this is a word from the Lord or is this their opinion when they are giving you advice. We want to be about listening to the Lord’s voice and not what other people think they would do! I’m not quite that bold and told him such so he said, play the blame game, let me be your alibi…tell them my pastor wants me to ask you if that is a word from the Lord that you and He have spent much time in prayer over or is this how you think would handle this suffering? I haven’t had that conversation with anyone but the day may happen! Because lots of people want to fix. And this article and our pastor speaks so clearly what people with long term illnesses need.

It also echoes the cry of my heart…first a miracle, if not a miracle…then gratefulness and joy in the midst of my suffering!

I used to think I might be bitter towards God when people would say things like God is going to heal Zine/Chloe. I just know He is going to. And I want to yell “shut up.” I used to think my faith was weak or maybe even I wasn’t a Christian because I doubted God’s goodness or His promises. I was supposed to be content in all things, right? And then one day in the middle of a real struggle, because not only did Satan attack me in that area, I saw him attack my children and my husband in the same area. And in the middle of this struggle, I get this text from a sweet friend reminding me that Isaiah 1:18 says…come now let us reason together says the Lord! Reason together means argue it out. So….let’s just say we’ve got to do a lot of arguing it out….and probably have a lot more to do. But we are not terrible Christians. We are most definitely sinners and we most definitely make mistakes…but sinners are most definitely Christians! But we also can look at our days (most days) with intentional gratefulness. We have to work on the joy part a lot of days! But that intentional gratefulness, that difficult joy, and that arguing out, is changing and transforming us daily!