A Season of Struggles and a Prayer for Reprieve

I feel so much like the past twelve months have had a common refrain run through them: "Please, Lord, give me a reprieve." I first found myself uttering those words when I was having my kidney pains that would not cease. I begged God to take them away and just give me peace. "Please, Lord, give me a reprieve."

I just needed a break from the pain, the hardship that seemed to never relent. I felt I was bearing more than I could bear and I was near the breaking point, I needed a break before I broke.

Then I plead those words again when I was in childbirth and the baby would not come, hours and hours after labor had begun. "Please, Lord, give me a reprieve."

And those very same words fell from my lips again and again in my first months with Claire when I begged God to help me parent her, to help her sleep, to help her stop crying so much. "Please, Lord, give me a reprieve."

By the third time I repeated those words, I realized the pattern. I realized that I'd never prayed those words before last October, and here I am praying them over and over again only months, weeks later. I realized that perhaps this was a season in my life, a season of trials that God was walking me through, letting me feel the pain, letting me cry out to him over and over again and wait on him to bring relief.

Each time I've been faced with those struggles, they've brought me to my knees in prayer and brought me to reach out to others, pleading them to join me in my prayer for reprieve. Those prolonged struggles have forced me to admit my weaknesses to those around me, to be vulnerable in admitting my pain, my hardship, and the fact that only God can make it all better. I have been forced to draw others into my circumstances, whether I wanted to or not. The struggle was so great I really had no choice.

When I first went into the hospital for my kidney pains, I noted how I'd never really known what it was like to struggle before. I'd had hard times, sure, and been lonely and made difficult decisions and brave choices. But I hadn't ever really felt like I was at a breaking point, a new low.

And these past few months, the Lord has been opening my eyes to those circumstances and shown me a new kind of bravery, one where I look to him for the relief, that I can wait on him, that the reprieve will come and I can depend on him for strength in the meantime. That's not a pretty thought—that "in the meantime" business—but I know that in making me wait and cry out, he is stretching me, showing me that he is my strength, that I am stronger than I realize, that together we can make it through.

It's that reality—that despite my struggles, God will persevere and rescue and redeem—that is the sunbeam that wraps itself around these struggles, that weaves itself throughout each of them. It's the theme that I feel God is wanting not just to write upon my heart, but to etch deep down into its veins and to pulse through its arteries. It's the theme I think God wants us all not to just know in our heads, but to experience in our lives.

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