Learning to communicate with God in the toughest times.
by Ruth O’Neil
When the phone rang one evening, I did not want to answer it. Somehow, through its eerie sound, I knew who it was and what they were going to say. Maybe if I didn’t answer, it wouldn’t be true.
That night was definitely a milestone in my life in more ways than one. I didn’t realize it when the phone rang, but it didn’t take long for me to realize my prayer life had come full circle. Dots from the past few months connected, and I could see God’s hand at work in my life.
Troubling discovery
A couple of years before that phone call, I came home from college one day to prepare for my wedding. In the quiet of the day, my mom and I were chatting when the subject of my grandmother’s recent breast cancer diagnosis came up.
“You know that breast cancer runs in families, right?” I asked.
Immediately, my mom started to cry. The week before, she said, she had found a lump but didn’t want to make a big deal of it with the holidays and upcoming wedding.
Hope and horror
I encouraged Mom to get whatever tests she needed. A few months later, just a week before the wedding, the biopsy came back negative. Mom was told not to worry.
She didn’t.
She should have.
About a year later, the cancer had spread throughout her body. The doctors gave her thirty days to live.
Prayers for healing
Naturally, I prayed for God to heal my mom. I believed He could, and I didn’t want to believe He would do anything else but make her well again. She was a beautiful Christian woman and still had children to raise. She was way too young to die.
Praying every day for my mother’s healing, I thought I should have some semblance of God’s comforting presence, but I didn’t. Why wasn’t God answering my prayers?
Disturbing question
One night while my husband and I were talking about Mom’s condition, he asked, “What if she does die? Knowing how close you are, will you be able to handle it?”
I don’t know why he felt he needed to ask me that. I didn’t think anyone needed to force reality on me.
What if?
As much as I hated to admit it, my husband’s “What if?” question made me think of things I had pushed aside for so long. It made me realize Mom would not always be a phone call away, even if she did live for several more years.
I didn’t know it at the time, but that question changed my prayer life.
Changed prayer
All the reports I got from my dad on Mom’s health were good, despite the doctor’s dim prognosis. Maybe he didn’t want to believe the truth either. But since I lived in a different state and couldn’t see her, I had to thrive on the hopes my family gave me.
Later that night, while lying in bed, I started to say the usual shallow prayer for my mother’s return to health. I still believed in intercessory prayer and that God could heal her. And I still prayed that He would. But I added something new to my prayers: “Lord, You know I want her to be healed, and I know You can make her healthy again. But if she does pass away, please prepare me for that.”
I still didn’t feel much different after I prayed. I didn’t know if it would make any difference.
Shallow support
Four months after her thirty-days-to-live diagnosis, I went home to visit my mom. So many people at church tried to give me support: “If your mother does pass on, it will be a great relief to you and your family to know she is no longer suffering.” Or “You know you will see her again one day in eternity.”
I loathed being told those things. I wanted to scream at them, “You’re talking about my mother, my best friend, my daughter’s grandmother. How can you tell me how I’m going to feel and that it’s going to be OK?”
Hard realities
All I was sure of was that my mom would not be here on earth with me, where my family and I needed her. I would not be able to talk to her anymore. She would not see my children grow up, and we would not get to be two old ladies together.
Being an adult, being married, and being a mother myself made no difference. I still needed my mom. I would no longer have her here to answer all my “urgent” parenting questions.
Death call
When the phone rang that night, it was one month after I visited Mom. Knowing that whether I answered or not, the message would be the same, I picked up the receiver.
Hesitantly, I answered. “Hello?” I was hoping for a wrong number.
A voice that sounded like my brother’s, but was quiet with sadness, simply said, “Mom’s gone.”
Different response
Immediately, I called my husband at work. Then I sat down, expecting the tears to start flowing uncontrollably. A few did come, but not nearly as many as I had expected. They were almost forced.
I felt guilty, thinking I should have been bawling my eyes out. She was my mother, after all.
Answered prayer
After the funeral when everything had settled down and I was back in my own home, my husband made a brief comment that again made me think. “You and your sisters seem to be doing OK. Better than I thought you would be at this point.”
That was when I realized that what I had prayed for, God had granted. Not the part about restoring my mom’s health, but the part about being able to handle whatever God sent my way. True to one of His aching souls, He had prepared me.
Bible truth
Since then, Romans 8:26, 27 has become my favorite Bible passage:
Likewise the Spirit also helps in our weaknesses. For we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. Now He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He makes intercession for the saints according to the will of God (NKJV).
I learned its truth when my mother went through her cancer ordeal, and I’ve leaned on it for other challenges in life. Even when I don’t know what to pray or what God’s will is, I can take these verses to heart and ask that His will be done in all situations, confident that He will answer.
I have asked the Holy Spirit for help many times since then. When the problems have passed, I can see where God’s hand has been at work. God always provided the comfort I needed, and I know He will continue to.
Prayer power
The power of prayer is not something we can be taught. It won’t affect us until we learn it for ourselves.
Praying is such a large part of our walk with Christ. It is how we communicate with God and partly how God communicates with us, if we are willing to sit quietly and listen. We can be confident that whatever His answer is, we have His strength to get us through.
Ruth O’Neil has been a freelance writer/editor for more than thirty years. Besides freelancing, she has written four stand-alone novels in the What a Difference a Year Makes series (Come Eat at My Table, Belonging, Lunch Ladies, and With Every Breath). She wrote the Spiritual Insights from the Classics series, which are devotional companions to classic literature. Ruth lives in Lynchburg, VA. Visit her website at www.ruthoneilauthor.com.