Showing Up For Others. Don’t Underestimate the Power.
I found a very deep pit. It was a darker black than I ever care to see again. The pit was not mine. I am used to my own pits and have begun to master how to climb both in and out of them. This pit belonged to a child of mine.
Seeing your own child in a pit of pain and darkness is just about the hardest thing. And I know hard things.
For the privacy of my loved ones I won’t get into the details but I will say there was a lot of darkness. I found the pit, and when I went inside to find my child, I didn’t find her or the bottom. Instead I found more and more darkness. The pit was deep. SO deep. There were others in the pit with her, pulling her down deeper into it. And I kept trying to find the bottom, to see how deep it was. For two weeks I looked and only found more darkness. Then one day I found the bottom. A place to stand. A place to look up from. But two weeks of down, down, down, into more and more darkness is terrifying. That is a long time. And a lot of darkness.
During this whole time of falling into the dark, my feet not having a place to land and no hope yet of UP, I texted asked for prayer. I have an incredible support system of amazing people and amazing prayer warriors, I do. Many people surrounded me. I am blessed.
But I want to remember the one person who stood out, that’s why I am writing this. Heads and shoulders above the rest. Not because her she is a close friend or her prayers were more holy or more powerful. Not because of some magic Christian formula she followed, but because she kept showing up.
Every.Single.Day. She SHOWED UP.
I got many “I will pray for you” texts from many people. I even got one or two actual prayers. Oh the blessing. But one person showed up in a way that was unbelievable. Not with "pomp and circumstance. Not with bells and whistles. Not with a special formula or extra holy prayers. Just simple prayers. Every. Single. Day.
What happened was a miracle. I have never seen God like so vividly as I did when he showed me himself in this interaction. She didn’t even know any more details then I have revealed in this blog post. Barely anything, yet every day her prayer was perfect. If I had emailed her every detail of the situation and told her exactly what was going on, her prayer couldn’t have been any more perfect than it was. It was perfect. Like she KNEW.
Like she knew.
She didn’t know, but GOD DOES. He guided her to pray the perfect prayers. Perfect. Day after day, exactly my heart’s cry. It was incredibly powerful.
GOD knew every single detail of our lives, details he hadn’t even revealed to me yet. He knew every ache of my heart, every hurt we were experiencing, every fear. And I learned, if we are listening to Him, he uses us like a powerful force. HE can send us out like a love hurricane to the people who need air. When I could barely breathe, He used her to blow love, compassion, empathy, help, comfort, peace, and even joy into an incredibly hard three week period. Her prayers were simple. Sometimes no more than a couple sentences. Sometimes just a verse. But they were every single day. When the lights and the shiniest of Christmas activities lured everyone else’s mind away, she was there. While others partied and laughed, and I fasted, prayed and sobbed…she was there with me. With me. IN PRAYER. Simple prayers. But they were holy moments when I read them. Holy holy moments.
She showed up. Every day. In prayer.
I can’t say I have ever experienced the love of Christ like I did in that 3 weeks. The way God would whisper just what I needed to hear into her ear. The way she showed up to say it so I could hear it. The way she prayed when I had no strength to pray. When everyone else was celebating Christ, she was BEING Christ to me.
There is power in just showing up. Don’t ever dismiss the power and miracle of just being there for someone. We don’t need to be super Christians or theologians to show up. We just need to be willing. God uses the willing. Just show up.
