God...please...I'm begging you!

Kayley Hospital Watch

“God please…please…please…help me, I'M BEGGING YOU” she sobs. I wipe tears… run my fingers down her ankles… hoping to somehow ease or distract her suffering. “God, WHY,,,, WHY,,,, WHY,,,, aren’t you helping me? I don’t understand, I don’t understand” she pleads.

“God this isn’t fair, I’m so tired of being in pain” she wails.

She then turns the tables. “Dad, why is God not answering me, I don’t understand”?

I’m gut sick… speechless… crushed. All I can do is lay my head on her legs. I want to cry, no, I want to wail, sob, cuss, scream but I do nothing other than bury my face on her lap.

Our nurse walks in. He is an Asian man whose countenance is unlike any other man I’ve ever known except my mentor Morris Chapman and I ask him if he will pray for her. I also state that maybe God will hear his prayers better than He does mine. ( the very first time I saw this man months ago I immediately knew he was a believer and told him so) He agrees to pray and I get down on my knees.

This good, godly man has a incandescence… a smile… similar to what I assume Jesus would wear.

He prays much better than I do. I can tell he is much closer to Jesus than me. (My connection has gotten a little staticky) He has a humility, a tenderness about him that is endearing. I am envious of his Christ- likeness.

After he prays her pain escalates.

I follow him out the door and ask him something I have not asked anyone in these past 4 months. Something about him makes me reason he might solve this riddle.

I inquire, ” Why does God not ease her pain when it would be so easy for Him to do so”?

He softly smiles and looks up at me. After moments of deliberation he replies, ” I don’t know but you are here for her and you just have to be faithful. Gods timing is strange”. His gentle answer was delivered with grace and sensitivity uncharacteristic of men.

I answer without anger but with frankness, “I do not like His timing! Four months is too long! He is asking way too much”. He smilingly repeats in a soft yet strong voice that I must be faithful.

I text Missy that what little faith I have left is being killed. (She fought this same fight last night-we alternate nights/share days)

I come back in the room, Kayley is still sobbing and she starts asking me again of the “why’s”.

Our nurses words are rearranged and I deliver them to her as I caress her steroid swollen cheeks. ” Baby, I am sorry but I have no answers for ANYTHING. All I know is that we have to decide whether to curse and hate God or stay faithful to Him. I refuse to curse and deny Him because then I truly would have nothing left or nowhere else to go”.

Her eyes are weary- half open- with gushing rivers running from all four corners. She says nothing.

30 minutes of hell later she falls asleep.

As I write she moans in her slumber.

I feel like I am sitting on a keg of gunpowder waiting to explode.

It’s now almost 2AM. The sun has long been asleep and the moon seems to be the only other thing that is wide awake. Together, in our own-yet very different ways-we seek to illuminate darkness until a new day dawns. A day that I pray will bring a new and much needed mercy.