Trust His Heart!

Today when I did my bible study in Isaiah, I was asked how much do you trust God! Of course my first thought was in the affirmative but as the questions probed deeper I could feel my heart close up a bit. Another question, what caused the level of trust you have both negative and positive? Again my heart tried to block something that I had buried deep within my heart. Do you have those places?

My mind went to a time when I was working in the ICU at St. Mary’s hospital. The hospital was extremely busy and I was working an extra shift to help with the over flow of very critical patients. I was called to a “code blue” in the Intensive Care Unit and was busy drawing blood, setting up equipment and following doctors orders for this very critical patient. As I nearly ran through the nurses station, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a large hand waving me into that room. I motioned that it would be just a minute. I went on to finish what I was doing, came out of that room and again saw that hand waving at me. You see this was not just any hand, this was the hand of my Dad! He lay in this bed, hooked to a ventilator to keep him alive. He had a lung disease called COPD that had taken away his ability to breath on his own. As this hand that I had been so familiar to me all my life, motioned for me to come to him, my heart broke to see his brokenness and pleading for help. In that painful moment, I remembered a conversation I had had with God, months previous, I said “God don’t let my dad have to die on a ventilator”, I continued “I see people everyday die that way and it is so hard, I know that he is going to die of this condition but not this way Lord!” As bitterness grew up inside me at seeing, my pleading to God not answered, tears of hurt stung my eyes, tears not only for my Dad but for that betrayal that I felt! That “WHY” that comes at times like these! As the grueling days and weeks went on my Dad finally died, still hooked to life support!

I took some time off from work for the funeral, of course, but when I returned to work I had to press down feelings as I passed by the room he had died in, as I ran into nurses and doctors who had cared for him and I even had to deal with the very same ventilator that he had spent the last days of his life hooked to. One day as I ran to get a vent for another patient, I opened the drawer and a little ball rolled to the front, it had belonged to my Dad and been evidently overlooked when the machine was cleaned. Physical therapy had given it to him to squeeze, to strengthen his weakened hands and arms. I remembered how he liked the idea of doing something to give himself strength. This man who had little control of anything else, felt a hope in squeezing this little ball.

I grabbed the ball, put it in my pocket and attended the patient that needed the vent but when I got the chance to pull it out the tears would not stop. I collapsed in a heap in the stairwell of that hospital the pain was as fresh as if my dad had just died. It made me want to hold the big hands that held it, I wanted to hug the big man who squeezed it in hopes that he would someday be strong again. That day I took the little ball home and stuck it in my drawer, but I also took my hurt and hid it deep in that “WHY” drawer of my heart!

Many years have gone by, I still have the little ball in my drawer but today I look at it in a new light! I hadn’t planned to write about the little ball but the Lord reminded me of the strength that came from that sad time in my life, the new compassion that I felt for my patients for all my working career and the love of God that was very near in a terrible time in my life. There is never a good answer to all of the “Whys” in life but I know that when I don’t understand what He is doing I can trust His heart for over and over again I read in the bible of His “unfailing” love. I love the lyrics of the song "Trust His Heart"!

God is too wise to mistaken

God is too good to be unkind

So when you don’t understand

When you don’t see His plan,

When you can’t trace His hand, trust His heart!

Isaiah 61:1 says he came to preach the good news, and bind up the brokenhearted and release from darkness the prisoners. Thank you Lord from releasing me from the darkness of my hurt! Heal that place in my heart that until now I had not brought out into the light. I praise you, Lord for that little ball that rolled into my life that day!

I love all of you who have shared my heart, weather sad or happy and I pray your heart will be blessed this day.