How God Answered a Four-Year-Old Prayer in a Hospital Room
"I would have lost heart, unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait on the Lord; be of good courage, and He shall strengthen your heart."
Psalm 27:13–14
Before I begin, I simply want to say thank you.
Over the past several weeks, I have been overwhelmed (in the best way possible) by the love and kindness so many of you have shown me. Through your prayers, encouraging messages, phone calls, flowers, cards, and countless other acts of love, you have blessed me more than I can express.
Although I've been able to share updates along the way via FB and other ways, I've needed some time to process all that has happened. As I've reflected on these past weeks, I've realized that this journey isn't just about what I've been through. It's about what the Lord has been doing in my heart through it all.
Again and again, He has reminded me that one of the primary ways He cares for His children is through His people. Thank you for being part of His care for me. I will always be grateful.
There are moments in life when you suddenly realize God has been answering a prayer long before you recognized His answer. That moment came for me in a hospital room.
A prayer I had almost forgotten.
A lesson that seemed ordinary at the time.
A season that made little sense while I was living it.
Then one day, years later, the Lord gently pulled back the curtain, and suddenly I realized He had been working all along.
This is the story of one of those prayers in my life.
Four years ago, I found myself walking through one of the most emotionally difficult seasons of my life.
Looking back now, compared to everything that has happened since, it may seem small. But at the time, it didn't feel small. It felt as though my world was falling apart. I didn't know how to process the emotions I was carrying, and I felt overwhelmed by them.
During that season, I found myself reading about the Apostle Paul. I couldn't get past one simple question.
How? How could a man who had been beaten, imprisoned, falsely accused, rejected, shipwrecked, and repeatedly subjected to violence against his own body write so much about joy? How could someone chained in a prison sing hymns in the middle of the night? How could he speak of peace when his circumstances offered so little reason for it?
The more I thought about Paul, the more I realized something.
If the Lord could give him that kind of peace...
If the Lord could fill him with that kind of joy...
Then surely He could do the same for me.
So that's what I prayed for. I prayed that the Lord would give me the same peace and joy in times of trial and suffering that He had given Paul.
"Lord, I want to know You like that. If You could give Paul peace and joy in the middle of suffering, would You teach me to experience that same peace and joy, even in my own circumstances? I want to know You more deeply."
That became the cry of my heart, and I trusted that somehow, in His perfect timing, He would answer.
I had no idea how He would answer that prayer.
If someone had told me then that just four years later I would be walking through cancer... enduring chemotherapy and radiation... lying in a hospital bed after major abdominal surgery... learning to walk again... and discovering that the very peace and joy I had prayed for was carrying me through it all... I would never have believed them.
But that's exactly what happened. Looking back now, I realize something that still leaves me in awe.
God didn't wait four years to begin answering my prayer.
He began answering it the day I prayed it.
He answered it by slowly changing me.
For years, I thought I was simply growing in my faith. I didn’t realize that every lesson in trust, every invitation to surrender, and every glimpse of His faithfulness was part of His answer to a prayer I had prayed years before. God didn’t just answer my prayer in a hospital room. He had been answering it for four years, and I finally recognized His answer.
Over the years, He taught me to trust Him more deeply. He taught me that surrender is not giving up - it is placing ourselves into the hands of a loving Father. He taught me to recognize His faithfulness in ordinary days. He taught me that gratitude is not reserved for life's happiest moments. It is a way of seeing His fingerprints, even, if not especially, in difficult places.
At the time, I didn't understand why He was teaching me those lessons.
Now I do.
He was building a foundation beneath my feet before the storm ever arrived.
When I wrote my last blog update in May, I thought I was simply sharing another step in my cancer journey. I had no idea it would be more than seven weeks before I would write again. Nor did I know that those weeks would become some of the most difficult - and most sacred - weeks of my life.
My nineteenth chemoradiation treatment was on May 21. The following day, the radiation machine unexpectedly broke down, creating an unplanned break over the Memorial Day weekend. At the time, it felt like an inconvenience, but also a relief. Looking back, I wonder if it was one of God's quiet mercies. My body was already struggling far more than I realized.
That weekend, we planned to gather with family and dear friends around a bonfire before they moved back to Georgia. I had looked forward to that evening. There is something special about sitting around a fire with people you love, sharing stories and laughter.
But that night turned out differently.
I was so sick and exhausted that I could only be outside for a short time before going back inside and climbing into bed. As I listened to the muffled sounds of laughter drifting through the windows, I had no idea that life was about to change.
Within days, I found myself in the emergency room for the first time in my life. The doctors did what they could, but no one yet understood what was happening inside my body. I went home hoping rest would help.
Instead, things became worse.
By Tuesday, I was so weak that I had to be wheeled into my radiation appointment. I will never forget the look on my radiation oncologist's face. He looked at me with compassion and agreed that we needed to stop treatment. My body had reached its limit.
My naturopath shifted my IV therapies away from fighting cancer and toward simply helping my body recover.
While I had hoped to finish treatment, I was also relieved to stop. Looking back now, I can see that the Lord reminded me of something He has been teaching me for years.
Sometimes faith looks like pressing on.
Sometimes faith looks like resting because He says it's time to rest.
I didn't know it then, but the hardest days were still ahead.
Food became almost impossible to eat. The thought of eating made me nauseated, and what I could get down caused pain. Days passed with almost no nourishment.
Then came Friday.
My abdomen became so swollen that I looked several months pregnant. The pressure and pain became unbearable, and Dan drove me back to the emergency room.
As we made that familiar drive, I didn't have long prayers.
I didn't have profound prayers.
Mostly, I just whispered,
"Jesus… Help."
Sometimes the simplest prayers are the truest ones.
Sometimes all we have is His name.
And sometimes…
His name is enough.
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