Ready for Miracles

Dear God,

Give me the strength to be present at my child's pain.
Help me to have faith in his competence.
Help me to be honest with him.
Help me to convey the confidence I have in him.
Spare me the necessity of using force.
Keep me from denying or minimizing what he is experiencing.
Don't let me abandon him in any way because of my own fear and weakness.
Don't let me be overpowered by my frustration and feelings of helplessness.
Remind me that pain is survivable.
Remind me that he knows that I would not permit this if it were not necessary.
Help me bear my suffering with strength, dignity, and honesty and so provide an example that will calm and reassure him.
Remind me that my touch, my smell, my presence are all to him.
Help me to stay here beside him.
Amen.

This was the prayer on another mom, Christine's, blog this morning. It is the perfect encouragement going into Maxim's surgery tomorrow morning. I have so wanted to teach Maxim, as with all my kids, not to be a whiner for no good reason. At the same time, I obviously need to exercise patience and compassion because his journey does include some real pain and discomfort during and after surgeries and therapy.
I don't want to minimize, or blow off, his real need for comforting and encouragment along the way. When a child is disabled, there is an extra challenge that affects the entire household; how to attend to the real needs without making that needy child the center of everything.

Last night, Daniel and I took Cyan and Maxim to a prayer meeting with a group of people who are, like many believers, striving to more fully understand listening to God and nurturing a true two-way communing with Him. Deepening our belief that this is even possible because of the shed blood of Christ affects the confidence and boldness with which we pray. Scripture dictates that we pray without ceasing and without doubt. Hearing the testimonies of others who have experienced God's working in their lives in response to prayer helps us grow in our prayer life.

Anyway, by the time we went to the meeting, I have to admit I was feeling completely spent emotionally, physically and even spiritually. Being fatigued in any of these areas makes praying effectively a challenge.

I learned that when we are tired, we need to be in fellowship with others who are not at the moment. As others prayed for Maxim and Cyan, I realized that they were sensitive at that time to things I was not thinking to pray for because my energy has been stretched in too many directions lately. It was such a relief to hear how God was leading them to lift up certain aspects of our children's lives, even though we had never met before last week. They prayed what needed to be prayed, not because they personally knew us so well, but because they were responding to God's leading of what to lift up for His care.

We are not going to Grand Rapids tomorrow alone. We are going there with the Most High as our High Tower of Strength, Strong Refuge and Healer. It is His will to reveal Himself in places where He has been forgotten or never acknowledged at all. Wouldn't it be amazing if it were in a hospital through the feet of a little boy named Maxim!?