My heart has been very heavy lately. I think it’s because I’m very sensitive and things tend to affect me deeply. In the midst of all the end of grad school-internship-job search-research project-manage life on one income-chaos that has been going on, people around me have been suffering.
A family friend from childhood has been battling a brain tumor, and the sister of a fellow intern has also been fighting a brain tumor. (Both of them around 30 years old.) My dear friend “Simple Girl”, whose blog I often share, has miscarried twice in the past 6 months. There have been oil spills and flooding…crime and violence…injustice and irresponsibility. Where does it all end?
Sunday evening I was anxious, worried about finances and cursing the fact that I had to do this unpaid internship. At 1am, I was desperately combing the internet for jobs to apply for that I might have missed. As I scrolled and searched, I was thinking about my fellow intern…I had received a call earlier in the day that her sister took a turn for the worse over the weekend. I was frantically looking for work, worried about an income, while her family was dealing with so much more than I could comprehend.
So I gave up. My thoughts and feelings blurred together. I can’t quite describe what happened, but it was a mess of pain, hurt, worry, sadness, fear, and confusion. I tried to make coherent thoughts and phrases, but they didn’t come out. I decided to just pray with feelings. At some point all the negative feelings left me, I let go, and I finally fell asleep.
Yesterday after I woke up, I had an email waiting for me, inviting me to a job fair at an organization for which I would love to work. I hadn’t received any response from the applications I’d submitted, so finally getting some kind of response was exciting! A few hours later, as I was checking my email at my internship, I had another message…this time a direct request for an interview! I was in shock, and utterly thrilled….I thought about jumping up and down, but thought better of it. When my supervisor arrived, I told him the good news. He had even more good news…my fellow intern had called to say that her sister, who had been unresponsive and on a ventilator, was now alert and talking to her family. The doctors had no explanation and had never seen such a reversal occur.
As he was telling me this amazing news, it was as though an inaudible voice inside me stirred and said, “I heard you.” And I knew. I didn’t have to have all the right words in the right order. I didn’t have to even have words. The jumble of emotions and fleeting, unconnected thoughts spinning through my head all made sense to the One who knows how to translate all of it. Lucky for me, He’s also the One in control.
It remains to be seen how things will pan out in either situation, but I know these wordless prayers will be answered in their own way, in their own time, as He knows best.
Loved this post. What a good reminder for all of us. It’s so easy to get stuck in a place of worry and forget that all we really need to do is let it go and trust in the One who created it all. Thanks!
I needed that. Thanks, Steph.