God healed him. I can’t believe it! It’s been nearly two months. Two months of “normal,” well a new normal for us. We first noticed it on our last vacation. We thought maybe it was due to the warmer weather, the lack of Jedi or maybe the medication he had started to take. But then we came home and he was still fine. He went off his meds and he was still fine. Two months in and he is still fine.

I can’t believe it! After fighting for so long, praying for so long, hoping and wishing and waiting for so long HE IS HEALED. 

What’s even more amazing is that God didn’t just heal his nose, he has healed his heart too. 

I’m almost too afraid to even write this, afraid it will become untrue and his nose problems will come back. I’m even more afraid that these words might in some way crush you, because you are waiting for answered prayer.

I uttered it over and over as I fell asleep knowing he was upstairs spiraling, hurting, frustrated from our season of life. 

I have prayed for God to heal B’s nose for almost three years, the same prayer over and over again. But as the days slipped by and the years started adding up his nose got worse and his heart got heavier. We had more bad days than good days. 

I remember one week before our vacation out west, B had four good days in a row, completely normal, no nose problems at all. We were so elated! Honestly, we thought God had finally answered our prayer, that B had been healed. Then, in the midst of Zion, hiking up the side of the mountain his nose was triggered again and the bad smells came back. We were devastated, our hopes crushed. We were wrestling with God in the middle of the desert like Jacob did.

I have prayed a lot of prayers in my life. My prayers have been sobbed into my pillow, written onto my journal, whispered while I was driving, spoken before I ate and in the morning hours unable to get back to sleep. But for me these past couple years prayer has become an almost first response, a NEED because of my inability to fix anything.

God heal him, direct our lives, change our hearts, redeem our marriage.

Some prayers I have graciously seen answered and others, I’m still waiting. And to be honest the waiting is frustrating, sometimes nearly unbearable. We so want to see the end of our story, we want to get past this hurdle, we want to be on the other side having moved forward.

But I think the waiting is purposeful. 

The waiting drives us closer to Him. The waiting creates a space in which our need is so tangible that we see more clearly who we truly are. The waiting is what makes the gift sweet if and when it is answered but even more, it makes the Giver sweeter, because God is far greater than His gifts.

We have a choice in the waiting, we can either believe God’s word or not. We had to wrestle with all the truths we said we believed but couldn’t see. Years of unanswered prayer. Years of heart ache. Years of confusion. Years of hard turning harder and hearts growing bitter. But He’s faithful to not leave us.

I wrestled a long while, like Jacob in the desert, to see the goodness of God. But it was in the darkness, in the night, that I learned His goodness is not dependent upon how I feel or what happens.

God is good period. There doesn’t have to be anything added to that statement for it to be true. He is good. It is His character and out of His goodness flows blessings. 

In the darkness it was hard to see His blessings. But they were still there because He was still there. He never leaves us nor forsakes us.

So friend, I don’t know what unanswered prayer you are clinging to. I don’t know what keeps you up at night or knocks you to your knees. I don’t know what your heart desperately longs to have healed, restored or granted but I know that He is with you. I know that He hears you. I know that He is good and I know that waiting is producing something. So cling tightly to the Giver not the gift and continue to pray. Your Father is with you.