Day Eight – Just Pray

 Psalm 18:6 (NLT) “In my distress I cried out to the Lord;
    yes, I prayed to my God for help.
He heard me from his sanctuary;
    my cry to him reached his ears.“

I was finally released from the hospital and eager to get home to our sweet baby. Once home, I knew being with her would be a healing balm to my weary and wounded body. I was ready for life to get back to normal.  Sadly, the contentment would not last. 

Soon after I made it home, I begin to get ill. Complications from the last surgery set in and I returned to the hospital.  In fact, I returned multiple times, one resulting with me laying on the emergency room floor. When you feel that bad, you’ll lay anywhere. Even a dirty floor. With each visit I became more and more desperate, agitated, and angry. Just ask the nurse who cleaned up the shattered glass from the vase of flowers I threw across the room. By the way, I was aiming for the mirror not the nurse. Big target, lots of mess. My heart was like that broken vase. Shattered in hundreds of pieces, never to be repaired. Nothing could console me. I left my house over a week earlier expecting to be gone one day and here I was separated from my baby. Again. 

I spent a total of almost 3 weeks in the hospital. Three weeks away from our daughter. Three weeks of agony. I was as close to a breakdown as I ever could be. And I was bitter. Why did God hate me so much? Why would He allow this in my life? Up until then, I had led a pretty charmed life. I always pitied those poor people in the hospital. Now I was one. This in shape aerobics instructor was now sick and scarred. I dropped from around 100 pounds to 75 pounds.  I couldn’t bear to look at myself in the mirror. 

My mother was the most optimistic person in the world. She had great faith and a devoted prayer life to go with it. I will always remember her words as she tried to comfort me before one of my trips back to the hospital. I was inconsolable and in one brief, rare moment I saw a look of desperation on her face. My usually positive mother look scared for her daughter. She had no answers but one. Through tears, she said “just pray, Robin. Just pray.”

Pray? Really? What good would it do? Would God even listen to me? He seemed to be ignoring me. Would prayer heal me? Would it get me back home? Would prayer even help our original “problem”? All the trauma and we were no closer to being able to have another baby. And I was apart from the one we had.  I had no interest in praying. I didn’t think God would listen anyway. But my mom knew the power of prayer and she knew God did listen. It would just take me awhile to learn that fact myself. And I would learn that God, in His timing, can put the broken pieces back together again. The vase? It was a total loss. 

© 2019 Robin R King