Quarters Not Accepted

Two months ago today, I woke up confident that my dad was going to recover. I heard about the white blood cell count dropping while I was still at work, but I didn't think it was too big of a deal. He'd made it through major brain surgery. He'd gotten the meningitis out of his system. He'd been expected to die several times before and hadn't.

Two months ago at about this time I was visiting him. He said "Happy birthday late" and he smiled at me and we watched an episode of the 1960s Batman together and I thought there would be more greetings and more smiles and more Batman viewings and I was happy, and it was the last time I'd ever be that kind of happy again.

Two months later, I am smaller. So much smaller.

Two months ago, I thought that my words to God's ears were something special. Not just that He heard and cared about them, but that He was swayed by their eloquence, their fervor, their sincerity. ("Doesn't Suzanne have a way with words?") I thought that the prayers of thousands would give us a statistical advantage. I thought I had seen signs of healing. I thought we all still needed him here, that I could figure out what God would do because I was so spiritually attuned.

I thought God was a vending machine.

I know what I thought then because of how I've been feeling since, how confused, especially about prayer. How hesitant to tell people I'm praying for them, because surely they must see how high my prayers rank based on what happened just a day over two months ago. How distressed to read of people rejoicing at answers to prayer that tumors would prove benign or such. (I truly am glad for them, but at the same time....)

At some point after my cousin Heidi told her three-year-old son Landunn that Uncle Bill was dead, he had a question for her: "Did Jesus make Uncle Bill all the way better, like we prayed?"

She started crying as she answered, "Yes. He's all the way better."

"That's awesome!" Landunn exclaimed, and his prayers for healing turned that night to prayers of thanksgiving to a God who made his great-uncle all the way better.

As limited creatures of an unlimited Creator, we have no grounds to consider prayer answered only when God provides us with the answer we imagined would suit us best. We have no grounds to imagine ourselves influential with God in the same way that a good salesperson is influential with a customer on the fence about making a decision. If Suzanne has anything, even a way with words, it has been given. And though we can give gifts back to God in love and gratitude, we cannot buy Him off with what He has given to us.

"Once more through the fire," I wrote of my family after my cousin Bridgette died, "might bring them out as diamonds."

Which are also bigger before the pressure begins.

"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to obtain an inheritance which is imperishable and undefiled and will not fade away, reserved in heaven for you, who are protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.

"In this you greatly rejoice, even though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been distressed by various trials, so that the proof of your faith, being more precious than gold which is perishable, even though tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ; and though you have not seen Him, you love Him, and though you do not see Him now, but believe in Him, you greatly rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory, obtaining as the outcome of your faith the salvation of your souls."

--I Peter 1:3-8