He answered my prayer and it terrified me.

Probably 90% of me believed that God was NOT going to answer this prayer. 10% of me believed he might. 

Many people had been praying all day that my son would have a timely seizure during the allotted hours that the isotope could be injected and the brain scan performed. 

But all day - no dice. He usually has focal seizures many times a day but even with sleep deprivation, withholding meds, and light and noise stimulation, nothing. And he rarely, if ever, has had one in the late afternoon.

There was 45 minutes left before the isotope expired. It was looking like we’d have to wait another long night and try again the next day. Tim and I had swapped out so he was with Calvin at the hospital and I was home.

I knelt. I put my face on the floor. I prayed a convoluted prayer about His will and my will and me trying to surrender to his but would you? Would you do this for us God?

I prayed at 3:45. He had a seizure 15 minutes later, 31 minutes before the isotope expired.

I was on a coaching call with a couple of clients while my son was seizing and being injected with a radioactive isotope. My husband filled me in when I got off my call and then I had to leave the house to pick up one of my other sons and feed my boys and help them with homework. Then I ate ice cream and binge watched absolute garbage television (Love Is Blind).

Then I turned off the tv and wept. I wept for the pain my son was having to endure. For the unknown future he has before him. But I mostly wept because there is a God and he is terrifying. Terrifyingly huge. Terrifyingly present. 

A song we sing at church goes, “That’d be a grief I could not bear, didst God not hear and answer prayer. But a prayer-hearing, answering God supports me under every load.”

That would be a grief, a terrifying grief, if there were a God that did not hear or answer our prayers. 

But that night I felt very deeply that it is just as terrifying, if not more so, to have a God who does. 

Who does hear. 

Who does answer. 

Who lets me negotiate with him.

Who am I? 

All these verse swirled around in my head as I wept.

"What is man that you are mindful of him?"

"Depart from me, for I am a sinful man."

“I spoke once, but I have no answer— twice, but I will say no more.”

I am so massively small. He is so massively large. WHY would he pay me any mind? WHY would he listen or change his mind for me? 

Be he does that. He does that in Scripture. He changes his mind for his people when they pray, ask, seek, knock.

Not always. We don’t have a hold on him. He is untamed. Good but not tame. He is his own person and we don’t get to control or change or decide who he is. 

But he lets people know him. He wants people to know him. Like how a friend wants to be known, and to know. 

And he lets people pray and poke and prod and coerce him. Negotiate with him. If there were only 10 righteous people would you spare the city? What about 5? 1?

It gives me pause. 

It gives me pause. 

Do I want to negotiate circumstances with God? Is that wise? Do I know enough to ask for what I think will be best? How could I ever know what is best? Why should I ever presume that my will would be better than God’s will?

God is love.

God is doing everything for love. He is even allowing suffering for love. Jesus was made perfect by his suffering. And he wants no less for the rest of his children. 

Count in all joy my brethren when you encounter trials of every kind, for the testing of your faith produces endurance. Let patience finish its work that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing.

God’s will is love. Deep, known love. God’s will is that I know him. Like really well. 

He wants me to know him really well. 

It’s not about the circumstances, it’s about the knowing, it’s about the relationship. 

That’s what he’s pursuing, recklessly at times, it would seem, this Hound of Heaven relentlessly committed to the relationship, even though it means he must make us suffer, even though it means he must suffer, even though we accuse him of injustice while we suffer. He patiently endures that. He lets us accuse and rail and curse.

Maybe at times I’ll see it. See him. See him answer a prayer or not answer a prayer and be terrified of him either way. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. 

Last night, I was shaken. And I think that’s what it was. The fear of the Lord.

The terror of knowing a God who not only hears prayer but sometimes moves heaven and earth to answer.