We become who we really are in the wait.
And who we are matters.
I’ve seen it firsthand. I’ve seen it
while sitting on a couch next to a friend dying of ALS. I’ve seen it in hands,
once nimble, trembling as they barely pecked a computer’s keyboard. I’ve heard
it in speech, once clear, once sure, now slurred and halting. I’ve witnessed
the truth, the beauty, of a woman who knows how to wait, a woman who changes
her world.
I hadn’t seen her in over a month
except across the sanctuary at church. But that day, two friends and I stopped
by her house to pray with her. When I walked in the door, I saw that she was
thinner than before. And her hug was weaker. But her smile was the same. And
her countenance glowed.
We settled on the couch and asked
how she was doing. I expected to hear about how hard it is to live with ALS,
about the difficulties of not being able to tie a shoe, button a shirt, type an
email, or go on the long prayer-walks she used to love. I’d gone on one of
those walks with her and experienced the joy she once took in them. Now she
could barely shuffle across the room. I knew I would cry, and I did . . . but
not for the reason I’d expected.
Instead of telling us about the
progression of her disease, she asked about me. She asked how was I holding up
with Jayden’s new diabetes diagnosis, was I finding time to draw close to God
in quietness and solitude, was I able to make space for myself to renew my soul?
She told me she had been praying for me. I shared and received her love. Then I
received a greater blessing.
She leaned in, her voice lowered.
“I’m so glad you came.” She smiled. “I want to tell you what God has done.” She
pulled the computer onto her lap and tapped at it with one shaking finger.
Pictures flashed on the screen. Sisters, nieces, relatives who had always been
hostile to the love of Christ. She had been praying for them for years,
decades, without even the tiniest softening of their hearts toward God. And
still she prayed, and waited, and prayed some more. Year after year, decade after decade.
She pointed to a twenty-something
girl on the screen. “You remember my niece? A friend of hers died, and then she
heard about my disease. She’s going to church now with that friend’s family.
She accepted Christ.” Her face glowed with joy. “And that’s not all. My sister
is going to church with her. The sister who wouldn’t even let me talk about
God. When she was here visiting me because of my ALS, she asked me if we could go to church.” Then she told us about others
who were becoming open to God’s love since her diagnosis. A runaway daughter
had come home. Another sibling had been able to talk of God to their aunt.
Story after story of loved ones who were opening their hearts to her because of
her disease, and so were also opening their hearts to Jesus after years and
years of waiting.
Through this horrific disease, God
was moving in ways she’d been praying about for decades. Years of praying and
waiting and seeing no movement, and now as ALS ravaged her body and threatened
her life, she glowed with the joy of seeing God’s work in the long wait. She
was filled with a wonder that ALS could not steal.
And I wept at the sight of that
wonder, the wonder of a faithful servant whose soul was formed in the waiting,
a woman dying of ALS and yet filled with such hope that even as her body fails,
she glows with the faith of one who knows she’s truly loved.
And I know that the wait was where
the work was done. It was in those years of prayers with no answer that she
became this beautiful woman of God, a woman who will leave a legacy of love.
Not one prayer, not one cry, not one
moment of all those years was wasted. God used them all. It all mattered.
And now God was using the disease
that would take her life. And in the midst of it all, she had no regrets.
Because when she gave her life to Christ, she meant it. She still does.
That’s
Sarah’s kind of faith. That’s Sarah’s kind of legacy. I am blessed to have seen
it. The whole world is blessed.
That
is a life that has waited well. That is a life that changes the world, that
blesses the world.
And
I am amazed.
