Life’s edge looms, and I have to step off it. It’s a divine invitation, see. And that makes it different from any other offer of excitement. My foot hovers over the chasm, but I know the ground will rise to meet it.
And this has been my life.
“You have more faith than anyone I know,” my friend says. Her statement surprises me. I do?
It’s all about the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen, and it often scares me. But it’s the only way I choose to live.
My stomach lurches as I think about the past I’ve walked through in wild faith—like when God called us to give away our house in 2011, and we did—and the future I already live believing it will come to pass, even though obstacles taunt us, saying it’s impossible. Still, I count on an ending I know is coming when I don’t know it’s coming.
Faith in faith is nothing. What good is that? But faith in God—in the reality of Him, the truth of Him, the goodness of Him—is everything.
Several years back, someone at church invited me to step into what I think is one of the least glamorous volunteer gigs in the place. Since I don’t need glitzy to spur me on, I said yes to the request to become a prayer team member, which is really the promise of doing big things in the unseen realm. I can do visibly unfulfilled, often unanswered, mostly unnoticed work, though; I’ve done it for decades in prayer. What I didn’t anticipate was the opposite: the revelation and resolution of things in the short-term and seen realm. They have a word for that concept, and it's miracles.
And that’s where my story starts.
One day a couple of years ago, I sat in a lawn chair in our back yard. August breezes hinted at the soon turn of the calendar’s page, but the sunshine told me summer still thrived. Ricka, age nineteen at the time, rested in a chair next to me, one leg propped. It was just the two of us, and she was silent. I finally glanced at her. Sunglasses hid her eyes, but her mouth wobbled.
I straightened in my seat. “Hey, what’s going on?”
Tears and concerns spilled out. Newly back from a nanny job in Germany, she grappled with her future; what was next? She wrestled with God; was He even good? And she struggled with friends; would she find one who fit her?
“I just want someone I can call anytime, day or night,” she said. “Someone who will do last-minute things—like cliff jumping or rock climbing. Or whatever.”
I rested a hand on her and not steering the requests in any certain way, I lifted them up, my heart hoping most for a close friend for my kid. When I was done with my petition, we basked in the sun longer, soaking in light.
“I think God wants me to be friends with Him first, though,” my girl said, “before anyone else.”
I exhaled my everything. “You won’t go wrong there.”
Six weeks later, after a Sunday morning church service, I took my place along one of the walls of the great room. A few other prayer team members spanned the length of the wall too, available to pray for anyone who asked. Ten minutes passed, and no one approached me. People filed out, chatting with friends as they exited. I waited.
As the next service was about to start, a young woman strode in my direction and stopped in front of me, her features etched in worry. I asked her name, and she told me about her situation too. She had just graduated from college and wondered what to do with her future. And then she voiced a desire.
“I guess I want a friend—someone more like me—going where I’m going. Maybe they like the outdoors, doing things spur-of-the-moment—I don’t know.” Her eyes filled. “I just don’t have anyone I can call whenever.”
Sometimes answers to prayers come faster than I think and in unlikely places, and in this case, right after the 9:30 service on an average Sunday in October. I covered the young woman’s requests, then offered her my idea.
“There’s someone you should meet,” I said. I pointed out Ricka’s location, just outside the meeting place’s front doors, welcoming people into the 11:00 service.
Relationship set-ups don’t always click, but this one between two young women heading in the same direction wasn’t a human connection after all. God had done it but was kind enough to let me in on the plan, to let me witness the moment right before the birth of what would become a deep, enduring friendship.
And my faith grew.
Not all prayer requests are for companionship and find their answer six weeks later, though. Some needs cry out from relationships snapped in two by a severing they never saw coming, from a filed missing person's report, from the torture of not knowing—for too long—the ending of the story.
Come back next week for Marnie's miracle. I'll tell you all about it.
