“I want the kind of faith where I walk on water or sink trying.”
–Daina Norusis
Odd how I sit on this couch upon which I have sat so many times, looking at the chair in which you sat so many times.
Odd how I’m surrounded by potted plants and flowers that fill up the physical space you took, powerless to fill one single centimeter of the bleeding hole inside of my heart.
Odd how I think of all the “I love yous” at breakfast, you giving me my first car, bringing home my first kitten, and I don’t shed a tear until I walk into a gas station and remember how you always bought me a coke.
Odd how I’m scared to listen to the radio, lest I lose control over a song about a girl and her daddy.
Odd how I’m suddenly surrounded by comforts like a soft bed, a full refrigerator, a free bathroom, and I feel thankful for none of it.
Everything feels empty and odd.
Life feels expectant and strange.
Days march on like faithful soldiers, plummeting into the sea.
I find it odd that in a time where most people hate God, scream at Him, or don’t understand Him, I feel more thankful for Him than ever.
So I prayed for healing.
So I prayed for a healing, claimed it, jumped onto it and squeezed it so tightly I could feel healing’s breath in my nostrils, smell his odor on all of my clothing. I put him on a leash and dragged him everywhere I went. Never did a day pass when he wasn’t in the forefront of my thoughts, the basis of my beliefs, the foundation of my day.
Even when daddy began to get worse, I only believed healing.
Jesus said, “Whatsoever things you ask me, believing, that shall you receive.”
“Oh Jesus, I pray for healing. I pray for deliverance from cancer. I pray that every single tumor dry up like a raisin and disappear. I pray for every weak muscle to gain strength. I pray that though today, daddy can’t walk, soon he will run a marathon. I claim healing. I claim it, I claim it, I claim it, Jesus.”
So I prayed for healing.
Every single day.
Every single moment.
Every single second.
And on Sunday, I buried my daddy in an old cemetery in the hills of northern Mississippi. He lies sleeping atop one of those hills, surrounded by whispering trees and a sighing creek. I know if he would have chosen any cemetery, it would have been this one. Surrounded by old stones, family names of friends and ancestors all around him, in a cemetery named after an Indian chief, possibly one of our own ancestors. I know he would love to be at the top of that hill, letting the rain roll down his hill and on top of the other people at the bottom. I know he would love this peaceful place, if he were here.
But he’s not.
So I prayed for healing… Doesn’t seem like much now.
But healing has taken place. Where he is, he is totally and completely healed.
All those tumors have shriveled like raisins and blown away. Every weak muscle has gained strength and now he can run and truly never grow weary. I can see him now, in his New Orleans Saints sweatshirt jogging the streets of pure gold.
I just didn’t get to see it. But knowing that, well, somehow makes it more than okay.
On my way to the Dublin airport to fly home for the funeral, I was thinking of many things concerning this unseen healing. I said to God,
“I really don’t understand why you didn’t heal. We held on every single day and never doubted it. I spoke to my church, moved by you, to tell them daddy was going to live and be healed. I spoke to every friend I had, I wrote it down in blogs, I wrote it on the pages of my heart. I believed in healing more tangibly than I’ve ever believed for anything in my life. God, I never doubted you. I always trusted you. I’ve had faith that could move mountains, yet for some reason, you took the strength from my arms and the mountain never budged. I’m not angry at you. I’m not even really confused. I’m accepting and peaceful, but I just don’t understand why you led us to pray for healing for eight months straight. We went out on limbs, we told every doctor and nurse and church and friend he would be healed. Why didn’t you show off your glory in that way? Why didn’t you show of your glory by letting his embalmed body rise and live and proclaim the works of the Lord at the funeral home? I don’t understand, God, but I’ve had faith in you.”
Then God softly told me,
“Shannon, you’ve had faith in me? Faith isn’t made for situations, it is made for life.”
And once again, I have learned from God.
When we believe so strongly for a situation we can feel every bone in our body breaking beneath the weight of our expectancy, and when we place every single penny we have on this gamble that God is going to pull us through, and then we fall on our faces instead of into His arms, this doesn’t mean God has abandoned us.
Sure, this statement would have many atheists thninking, “How stupid, that when it is blatantly obvious that God didn’t answer her prayers, she would make up some reason to justify herself instead of admitting there is no God. If there was a God, He surely wouldn’t let such faith be unrewarded.”
But listen to me: Our idea of faith has been so wrong. We pray and believe for a situation, and when it doesn’t come to pass, we cry and scream and throw our faith on the ground and kick dirt in it’s face.
Faith was not made for a situatiion, it was made for life.
It encompasses situations, but it is not limited to situations. It is limited to life, because after life, then we receive the fruition of our faith.
When daddy was diagnosed with stage four cancer, we had faith. When he began to shrink away from strength to frailty, we had faith. When the doctors and nurses said he was declining and it wouldn’t be long until the end, we had faith. When he was on his way to meet Jesus, we had faith.
The moment the coroner pronounced him dead was not the end of faith.
If so, what good is faith to us? The moment it seems to fail us, it has done nothing for us.
Rather, the moment the coroner ponounces me dead, I’d like to be able to say:
When God called me to pray for healing, and daddy got worse, I had faith. When daddy died, I had faith. When I walked into that African hut and prayed for a new leg to grow on that man and it didn’t, I had faith. When I just knew that God was going to do the thing he told me and it never happened, I had faith. And when I became sick and knew God would heal me, and I began to fade, I had faith. And the second before I died, I was still aware of this faith.
And when I closed my eyes to this world and opened them before Jesus Christ, His words to me were:
Well done, thou good and faithful servant.
Instead of seeing these situations as the reason why we have faith, let us remember that faith is for life. Everytime God gives us burdens to pray for things that don’t happen, let us not lose our faith. Rather, let us hold to it even more, because faith cannot be explained eloquently in words. It cannot be understood by this world, because everything about faith is not of this world.
In fact, I venture to say that if you’ve ever had faith and lost it, you’ve never even had it in the first place. Faith means that we believe in God despite the circumstances, the outcomes, the odds.
Faith cannot be faith until it is realized, otherwise, it has been abandoned.
Faith can only be called faith when we see the outcome.
Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. This is what the great men and women of the Bible were commended for.
Hebrews 11:39-40:
These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised. God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect.
This means that promises that God made to my daddy about a new ministry, a healing and fruitful and anointed one, gets to be made perfect in me. And in you, too. God knew that more people would be saved for Him through this than through any other venue.
I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produes many seeds
–John 12:24
Now I think that if God had raised my father from the dead, millions would have come to know God. But God works in the way that I do not understand. He sees with the eyes of the end, while I see with the eyes of right now.
“My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways” says the Lord, “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts.”
–Isaiah 55:8-9
While at World Race training in Dublin, one of our leaders said, “I can promise you that 100% of the people that Jesus healed, died one day.” Oddly enough, I was thinking on that very quote mere moments before Aaron and Caroline told me about my daddy’s passing. But this just opened up a new thought for me: If all people do, actually, die someday, then why even heal?
The answer: So that more would believe in God.
Then Jesus told him, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet believed.
–John 20:29
Even though many would say we didn’t see Jesus’ miracle in my daddy’s healing, I still believe.
Because this is what faith is.
I would rather trust in God for 1,000 things that never happen than to spend one day without trusting in Him.
