Faith for each moment

This isn't the start of the new series yet, but putting together a couple of things that touched me.

A recent speaker in church talked about his family, which over the generations has seen a fair share of medical and developmental difficulties with children. Sometimes there were miracles, and insight gleaned that could help other people. Sometimes the children died. Sometimes there were miracles and then death.

It had me thinking about faith and God's will. I truly believe in the possibility of miraculous healings, but I know that they don't always happen. I also know that there are things we learn and growth we gain during the suffering, which is perhaps its own miracle.

I was thinking about these in relation to my mother's dementia, because that is what I am always coming back to. I would love for her to be completely cured. Barring that, I would love for her to at least always recognize my sisters and not think that there is still someone missing. That causes a lot of pain.

I pray for that specifically, and other things, but we are also learning patience and understanding, which are good things to have. We may come closer to being whom we need to be through this.

The question that rose from that is how do you know when you can have the miracle? What helped me was a conversation I'd had.

Sometimes when you mention that things are hard, you get kind of a nod and maybe a small verbal acknowledgement, but they really want to move on and they don't want it to be awkward. I get that, but a sincere listener recently let me talk about what things were like.

A big part of our current coping is diminished expectations. We seem to hit a bad point most nights, and I have not found a way to head it off. We can handle it better. We can try to give her really good times before and after. Sometimes we can try having good talks, even if the conversation will be lost to her. There is a lot of moment by moment management, and comparing notes later, and maybe the one advantage of dementia is that your mistakes are often forgotten too. Often, I have to pray right then.

A few nights ago when Mom was really upset I asked her to pray with me. More often I need to reset my abilities and clear my head via prayer.

At some point those all came together. If there is going to be a miracle that requires some action on my part, it will come to me through prayer. Maybe I will get the idea in a moment, or maybe there will be a growing sense of clarity. Those are both things that have happened. When I am in the middle of praying myself - listening as well as asking - sometimes what I am praying for changes. Sometimes that's because as I try to explain myself I gain a better understanding of it, but sometimes there is a better track that I hadn't considered yet and it comes to me.

The Bible Dictionary tells us that "Prayer is the act by which the will of the Father and the will of the child are brought into correspondence with each other." Not all at once, but that is how it works.