What do you do when your child is hurting?

What do you do when the pain they are experiencing can’t be fixed by…you?

What do you do when you feel helpless and unable to be the rescuer of your child’s needs?

A couple of months ago my precious little Mikayla came down with pneumonia, doctors prescribed her antibiotics, which I’m not usually fond of but she wasn’t in great shape and I begrudgingly gave in. A couple days into the antibiotics I noticed that she was breaking out a bit with a rash; I didn’t think a whole lot of it because she is an allergy kid and it’s common for her to have little marks or rashes when she eats something or comes into contact with an environmental agent that her body doesn’t like. I ignored it. Fast forward three days and Mikayla had broken out in a full blown horrible case of hives. Head to toe her poor little body was literally red, puffy and inflamed with hives. She was beyond miserable. I took her into the doctor and they ended up prescribing her with steroids. What was already a painful situation became an excruciating situation. She was constantly in pain, inflamed, uncomfortable and it seemed like it would never go away.

I felt so helpless.

As a mom I just wanted to make it go away.

Experiencing shingles several times in my life I knew closely what her pain probably felt like and could hardly bear to watch her so miserable.

I tried everything: Showers. Baths. Essential Oils. Balms. Clay. Benadryl. Homeopathic Remedies. Ointments.

I tried everything I knew how to.

Finally I took her to a naturopath therapist and she administered a laser type therapy that finally began to help more than anything else we had tried, but her body still had to go through it. It was still several days before she was completely healed.

The only thing left for me to do was to just pray, wait, hold her, cry with her, and trust that the Lord in time would heal her and that while she waited, while I waited, that He would comfort her.

That was it. It didn’t feel like enough but it was.

I was so used to just being able to fix everything. I mean…that is what moms do right?  Your baby gets a ‘boo boo’ – you kiss it and it’s better. I was used to being this superhero healer for her; this time I wasn’t “doing” enough.

We want to be doing and doing and doing. Sometimes the waiting on the Lord is where we are both healed. In waiting on the Lord to show me that my baby was important to Him I began to let go and know that He held her far greater than I ever could.  I began to understand that this wouldn’t be the last time I would have to let go.

I have to say that some of the most tender and healing moments of that experience was when I was just holding her, praying over her, crying with her, and simply being there.

This little case of hives wasn’t the first thing I’ve prayed her through and it won’t be the last. She will continue to walk her own journey of pain, waiting, suffering, hoping, searching, desperate…this is life.

I think back to my own life and all of the many times my own mother must have knelt helplessly as I walked through my own life’s trials of physical pain to emotional pain, from desperation to hope, from suffering to victory. It wasn’t her battle, it was the Lord’s.

We think we are helpless, helpless when balms, oils and human hands can’t help the visible – but it is actually in these places that we find our hope, our strength, and our comfort.

‘blessed are the weak’

‘blessed are the poor’

In the place of our want, we find Him.

In the place of our lack, we seek Him.

In the place of our unknowns, we know Him.

In the place of poverty and hunger He becomes our food and our drink.

Each time we walk through a new trial, we see something of God that we haven’t seen before….

I saw God differently through this. I saw Him hold me as I held my baby. I saw her make it through a trial. I saw me let go of her and entrust her to him. I saw her on her own journey and I saw the Lord.

Maybe this is you, maybe your baby doesn’t have hives, maybe they have something much more critical going on inside their earthly frame, maybe it’s an illness, depression, a toxic relationship they can’t escape, maybe it’s a struggle they haven’t yet shared with you…but you know it’s there.

It’s something, probably something, because honestly all of us are struggling and wrestling with something that God will ultimately use to us closer to Him…it just will.

Don’t give up searching for answers, that’s not what I’m saying here, I kept looking for things to comfort her and ways to heal her but it is the surrender of knowing that those things that were beyond my control weren’t beyond His control.

“I am the LORD, the God of all mankind. Is anything too hard for me?” Jeremiah 32:27

Pray for the things you can’t control, hold them, love them where they are and wait with them for Him.

“I would have despaired unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the LORD In the land of the living. 14Wait for the LORD; Be strong and let your heart take courage; Yes, wait for the LORD.” Psalm 27:13-14