50 - This is my comfort in my affliction:
for thy word
hath quickened me.
Laura Story understands verse 50. She and Martin were high school sweethearts with a brilliant future ahead. Laura was an award-winning songwriter who wrote the #1 hit "Indescribable" recorded by Chris Tomlin in 2004. In 2005, she married her handsome, athletic sweetheart and began working in music and women's ministry in a mega-church in the Atlanta, Georgia area. And then, late in 2006, an aggressive, invasive brain tumor invaded her husband's head and their world and the brilliance of the future began to dim.
Surgery...waiting...life hanging in the balance...ventilators...questions...fear...fighting for life...struggle...prayer...begging God...then...finally...slow indications of beginning recovery...and...
The athlete and the talented songwriter. Love that had waited throughout high school and college and finally became one only two short years earlier. Surely God would heal him, right?
Sometimes God takes another route than the one we feel He should take. Sometimes He has another answer.
Martin's surgery was successful, but the losses have been enormous.
Significant vision was lost. But the most painful loss was his memory. The high school years, the joy of discovery, the impatience of waiting before wedding, the exhilaration of athletic and musical achievement awards, the wonder of marriage and his life's love somehow got buried deep within the recesses of the brain's complicated processes and Laura was a nice girl with whom he lived but with whom he no longer shared a history.
I cannot imagine that kind of pain.
"Please, God!" "I have faith that You will, God." "Do you remember us, God?" "Where are you, God?"
This is my comfort in my affliction...
It's hard to take the next breath when you feel as if life is ebbing away.
...for thy word hath quickened me.
Quickened. King James for "given me life."
Somehow...through the pain--the shadows--the fear...Laura found hope beneath the questions. She found comfort in the affliction. She was quickened in the Pages...
Here is what she wrote: (Click here to listen...)
We pray for blessings, we pray for peace
Comfort for family, protection while we sleep
We pray for healing, for prosperity
We pray Your mighty hand to ease our suffering
And all the while, You hear each spoken need
Yet love us way too much to give us lesser things.
Cause what if Your blessings come through raindrops
What if Your healing comes through tears
What if a thousand sleepless nights are what it takes to know You're near
What if trials of this life are Your mercies in disguise?
We pray for wisdom, Your voice to hear
And we cry in anger when we cannot feel you near
We doubt your goodness, we doubt your love
As if each promise from Your Word is not enough
And all the while, You hear each desperate plea
And long that we'd have faith to believe
When friends betray us
When darkness seems to win, we know
That pain reminds this heart
That this is not, this is not our home...
What if my greatest disappointments,
Or the aching of this life,
Is the revealing of a greater thirst this world can't satisfy.
What if trials of this life,
The rain, the storms, the hardest nights
Are your mercies in disguise?
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