A Mother's Prayer

My friend Dianne Bartel is celebrating her 70th birthday this month, March 2009. She showed great excitement at our last MOPS meeting about turning 70 saying with a cheer: she loves it! Usually women don't get real excited about turning a year older, but Dianne looks at birthdays a bit differently than most of us. You see exactly half her age ago, 35 years ago, Dianne lay in a bed with cancer, uncertain as to her future. She earnestly prayed for God to heal her to allow her the privilege of having another year, many more years if possible, to see her children grow, her grandchildren, and now her great-grandchildren. Thirty-five years ago, at the age of 35, Dianne didn't know her future, but she knew and trusted in an Almighty God.

Thirty-two years ago my mother also lay in a hospital bed at the age of 34 suffering from cancer as well. Her prognosis was not a positive one and she also prayed to the same great God that she would see her children grow, her grandchildren, and dare she pray, her great grandchildren. Two great women - one awful disease - one incredibly similar prayer to One Great God.

Dianne's prayer was answered in the way she prayed. My mother's prayer was not. My mother went to be with Jesus just a few short months later leaving behind three children aged 14, 12 (myself) and 8, not to mention a devastated diabetic husband.

I've thought a lot of this parallel over the past couple days. It proves just how much I don't know God, but how much I truly love Him. I'm not bitter. I'm not lost. Quite the opposite...my siblings and myself have all been carried by this Great God for many years and we're all married to awesome spouses with three kids each, and we all serve the Lord in His sanctuary! My mother's prayers for her children have been answered, she just isn't here to see it.

The choice is mine - to be bitter or to be better. As the Matt Redman song goes, "My heart will choose to say, Lord, Blessed be your name!"

Job 1:21: "The LORD gives, and the LORD takes away. Praise the name of the LORD."

Isaiah 5:8-9: "For My thoughts are not your thoughts, and your ways are not My ways." This is the LORD's declaration.
"For as heaven is higher than earth, so My ways are higher than your ways,

and My thoughts than your thoughts."