A Sign of His Goodness

For some years now I have kept a bookmark in the Psalms. No matter how fast or slowly it moves ahead, when I reach the end, I go back to begin again.

Today brought me back up to Psalm 86. A penciled star by the title shows how much this prayer of David has meant to me through the years. But it was the marking at the end that stopped me in my tracks today.  

On March 22nd of last year I marked verse 17 as I prayed David's words for myself: "Give me a sign of your goodness..." It had been over a year since chronic Lyme disease had sent me to the couch. I badly needed a sign - as my journal shows just a week later.

March 29 - Sunday 

"Some days I get desperate for God to send some sign that He is actually in this thing with me, that He actually cares, that He's still in control, and that He's not just being a tyrant... Today was one of those days...

"I cried out to God inside, 'You don't even love me as well as a human parent,' along with more incoherent thoughts of agony and pain - not anger. Then I forced myself to remember that this was a lie, and I gasped for the truth, though I couldn't articulate it. 

"Within an hour, [a dear friend and prayer-warrior] called to pray with me. Mom told her I couldn't really talk as I was too weak from having gotten to church in the morning. Our friend - [dealing with even more chronic illness and pain than I, and for many more years] said I get a 'star' for that anyway. :-) She hadn't made it to church due to cluster headaches today.

"Yet she prayed and praised God all through the day and called and prayed for me until her horrible asthma-cough stopped her from talking.

"She prayed truth into my ears and mind and heart. Can you believe - she said, 'We know, God, that You love Hannah so much. More than even her parents can love her." Wow...

"Yep. God still speaks directly to our deepest needs. He answers His child's cries!" 

That was certainly a "sign," but it alone was not enough to get me through the year ahead.

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Before reading Psalm 83 this morning, today's date - May 14th - had already brought back waves of memories. Tough, painful memories. 

One year ago as I sit here typing, I was in surgery. Cancer had to be cut out of my body before it spread.

But along with the months of painful memories surrounding this date, I chose to remember the quiet ways God worked through the past year. I look back and see the signs of His goodness.

This is why the date in my Bible caught me off guard this morning. Eleven days after I asked to really see God's goodness in my life, my world got even darker. 

God had granted a few days of peace leading up to the April 1st ultrasound of a nodule on my thyroid. Even as I lay on the table, gentle music in the dimly lit room contained a few bars that harmonically/melodically exactly matched Sara Groves' beautiful song, "He's Always Been Faithful." And as I lay there and prayed for wisdom, really not wanting to go through with it, God led the doctors to the right decision of going ahead with a biopsy even though my nodule didn't really fit the specifications.

Just before the procedure, my endocrinologist reassured me, "You're in good hands." He was speaking of the lovely doctor who had been doing these biopsies for 9 years, but I also understood that I was in God's good hands. 

But then, God disappeared. Though I didn't feel like it through a "technically difficult" biopsy, the doctor reported that "the patient handled it well." I held myself together as I staggered out to the waiting room, Maren wheeled me down to the van Dad brought to the door, and we drove the hour home. My journal remembers more clearly:

"Then, and for the rest of the day I was in emotional agony...

 "But the worst pain was not physical. It was that I felt like God had left me when the needle stabbed the first time. And I couldn't shake that agony.

"Why did He 'leave me' to be consumed with tension and attacked by fears?... I was praying hard, gasping and crying for Him. Reaching in the dark. But I lost all sense of His presence and care. (At least it seemed that way. I would never want to experience that actuality.)

"It hurt so badly to have yet another thing in my life go 'worse than usual.' To have yet another example of people's fervent prayers answered with a 'No.' Prayers that a biopsy would not be needed; that my appointments would go well; that I would know God's peace and love..."

 I share this only because I know many of you have your own experiences of darkness, and some of you are going through them right now. And yet, there are more signs to come for you - as there are in my story.

But this is getting long. I'll save the rest for another post.