I just watched the sweetest “love story” movie! One of the last lines said, “In the moments of life, good and bad, just live life!” Very few days in this life are utopian days, and many days are ordinary days. Then, there can be very hard days that knock the breath out of you. You are not sure if you can ever come up and feel the sweet, refreshing wind again when just over the hill comes a buff that rejuvenates your weary soul and gives you the strength to rise above the hard days and anticipate the goodness of God.
My Bible reading is in Job right now, and I guess I caught a glimpse of what Job has been going through in this movie.
I‘ve had the crud this week and went to the doctor for the 2nd time today since Wednesday. I did not realize what day it was until I checked in, and it suddenly hit me: six years ago today, I was sitting in the same doctor’s office with this same cruddy mess, so sick. That was a hard day. Zack, our son, was in jail. He had been there for nearly a month. Drugs and failure to appear in court had been the culprits, but God put him there! He heard the cry of my heart and answered my prayer to arrest him, and before my eyes that day, he got arrested.
You see, he was walking the streets in 25-degree temperatures, and this Mama couldn’t bear the pain anymore, so I specifically asked God to arrest him so he would be warm, safe, off the streets. God came speedily with my request.
As I look back to today, six years ago, that was a hard day. But God!! The next day, January 12, was a hallelujah, glorious day when my Zack called from jail and said, “Mama, I got saved.” I shouted all day, called a million people, and shared what God had done! Between the bronchitis, crying, and shouting, I had no voice at all! But what a day of joy.
That night, at the Top of the River Restaurant, at my brother’s birthday supper, I collapsed and had to be taken to hospital by ambulance. I was unconscious for around twelve minutes. This began about two weeks of events in and out of the hospital before they found my problem.
There was a mass the size of a softball attached to my pancreas, small intestine, and bile duct! These were hard days! They did exploratory surgery and could not remove the mass because it was attached to so many things. The biopsy proved it was not cancer. Praise God!!
This was a great day! A month later, with prayer intervention through God’s people, the mass was gone. That was a miraculous day!
I, as Job, know my Redeemer liveth!! With the experience of these hard days, I personally, at this point of sixty-two years of age, had never been sick, had no surgeries, no hospitalization, and no daily meds. I had been so blessed with good health. With this mass, I had to trust God with my health in a way like I never had before. If you had known me, you would have known I’m a big chicken, a big scaredy cat. BUT GOD!! He brought peace like I had never experienced. I knew if I died or if I lived, He was with me, and I was secure in Him. These were peaceful days.
What I didn’t realize was that in the moments of the good days and bad days, there is still life to live, and God is still teaching me this today. My faith then needed to be increased in my God, who is all-powerful and all-knowing, because the hardest day of my life was two months away when my beautiful Zack died of an overdose on May 11, 2019.
God delivered my beautiful son from his chains that day, not the way I prayed. I prayed for deliverance here in this earthly life, but it came in an eternal deliverance in a moment I thought not!! How God delivered Larry and my broken heart to be able to speak at his memorial service on May 15 was a heavenly day. The angels of God encamped around us, and the Holy Spirit spoke through us as we celebrated our beautiful son’s life. I’ll never get over those moments; they were moments that are alive and press me on in the days that are violently hard.
I pray for you all tonight, in whatever way was the loss of your child, whatever horrible losses you have had in life that you know that God knows it was hard (and still is hard). It was a moment that, for me, is perpetual in my daily thoughts; however, I’ve learned that God will encourage us in our grief. He will astound us in moments of good and bad days. He came so we can live life more abundantly.
May we live in the moments of good days and bad days.
Live, just let us all live, is my prayer…
Diane Mann
Lean into Jesus Ministries
#dianemannblogs
