Good morning…
“It will be good for us all to be together,” my sister said as I booked a one-way ticket to Cleveland, Ohio to be with my 83-year-old mom in the ICU. “We may need to make some hard end of life decisions.” The reality was sobering. I had begun the normal day facilitating our Friday class beneath the back porch of our Atlanta home and by bedtime I was in my parents’ villa with my dad, my sister and my brother near our hometown of Berea, Ohio.
I had thrown together a carry on bag and donned two special pieces of jewelry, symbols supporting my soul (pictured above). One, a bracelet, was a gift from a dear friend at my 59th birthday dinner on Wednesday, the 23rd, the same day my mother’s health began to nosedive. The other was a “balance bead” necklace I had made for another dear friend years ago, when she was waiting bedside at the hospital with her mother, who eventually went home to heaven. (The “balance beads” have a God-bead slipped into the middle of a single strand as a reminder that God balances our needs with the needs of others.) I added a simple cross to one end, feeling the full force of the truth: “For now, this is my cross to wear.”
The bracelet and necklace gave me strength as I entered the ICU room to see my mom lying unresponsive, hooked up to a ventilator. I really had no idea what to pray. If she would not be able to recover as her active, vibrant self, should I pray for her healing on earth? Should I pray for Jesus to come get her, carrying her to her full healing in heaven? Should I somehow pray simultaneously for both?
Sitting in silence beside her bed God gave me a bead of balance. A sentence returned to me from the teaching God had inspired me to share last Wednesday at our Lenten Lunch and Learn class. I had shared the following wisdom from page 133 of Sue Monk Kidd’s book When The Heart Waits.
******
Sitting While Jesus Prays by Sue Monk Kidd
While attending a service at Grace Episcopal Church, I discovered another posture of waiting prayer. The Scripture reading that day recounted the last night of Jesus’ life. One verse among the many caught my attention. I had heard it all my life but never really heard it at all. “And they went to a place which was called Gethsemane; and he said to his disciples, ‘Sit here, while I pray'” (Mark 14:32).
It was the eve of Jesus’ death. He was on the verge of being arrested. The hour was late, and the crisis surrounding the disciples had drained them inside and out. Jesus took them to a garden to wait through the long night. Did he ask them to pray? To plead his case? No. Sit down and rest, he said. I’ll pray.
Sit here while I pray. I looked at the candles glowing in a quiet cluster on the altar and considered those words. Suddenly they became Christ’s invitation not only to the disciples but to me. He wanted me to sit while he prayed.
What could this mean? I kept wondering. The notion was remote to me. Was the Spirit of Christ present and active within us, praying for us? Could it be that the prayer of waiting is being still and believing that Christ prays within us? I was thunderstruck by the idea.
I recalled a particular verse in the Bible, one that had always seemed cryptic to me. Back home after church I looked it up. “If we how for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words” (Romans 8:25-26).
Dear God, I thought. You do pray in me while I wait. You prayer with sighs too deep for words.
******
Sitting beside my mom’s ICU bed, I suddenly knew what to do. I rested my hand on her arm and waited in silence, “Jesus please pray for me.” I lingered a while, repeating my request, “Jesus please pray for me.”
When my visiting time was up, I went back into the waiting room where my father and I talked about taking a visit to the funeral home if things did not improve. We needed to learn what next steps might be. “Let’s give her time to rest,” he said as we left the hospital for home. “We’ll come back to visit after dinner.”
Around 6:30 pm, my sister returned to my mom’s bedside first, reading Scripture and talking with her quietly. Eyes closed, motionless, mom laid still, breathing with the help of the ventilator. Soon after our father and I silently slipped into the room.
Stepping up to the other side of the bed, dad said, “Hello, Marie.” Suddenly her eyes popped open at the sound of the voice she had been married to for over sixty years. My sister and I were both there to witness this miraculous moment. My dad tearfully said, “You have come back to us. I love you so much. Oh, Marie! You’ve come back to us.”
Our mom kept her eyes open for about five minutes, silently soaking everything in. I was able to look into her eyes, naming our four kids and my husband Steve, letting her know that we love her so very much. I told her that so many of you have been diligently praying for God’s healing power to rise up in her. Our wide web of prayer support had never felt so palpable.
Meanwhile, the moment we get tired in the waiting, God’s Spirit is right alongside helping us along. If we don’t know how or what to pray, it doesn’t matter. He does our praying in and for us, making prayer out of our wordless sighs, our aching groans. He knows us far better than we know ourselves…and keeps us present before God. That’s why we can be so sure that every detail in our lives of love for God is worked into something good (Romans 8:26-28, MSG).
Dear God, I thought. You do pray in me while I wait. You prayer with sighs too deep for words. Since we were breaking the two visitors-at-a-time rule, gathering as a faithful foursome in the ICU that evening was brief and beautiful, a wonderful beginning to God’s answer to the powerful prayers Jesus is praying in and through us.
…Sue…
P.S. Thank you for your continued prayers for our mom’s slow, steady recovery. If you want to listen to the entire thirty minute teaching from our 3/26 Lenten Lunch and Learn, please touch on this link: https://www.dropbox.com/s/qe9biil3o22telx/Women%27s%20Lenten%20Service%20-%20Week%203%20-%203-23-22.wav?dl=0
In the month of March, we are gathering weekly to unpack the wisdom of Paula D’Arcy’s book Winter of the Heart: Finding Your Way Through the Mystery of Grief. This teaching goes along with Chapters 3 and 4 in Winter of the Heart.
