Still Waiting...but learning to find goodness.

“I remain confident of this: I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord.” Psalm 27:13 & 14. In 2016 these verses calmed a very anxious heart. So much was happening. It was a Sunday, July 31st to be exact, and two days before we had received a message from our oldest son. He was being medically discharged from the Navy. He’d had to leave a message and the details were few. He was in the sick ward, but he was ok, and he’d call back when he could. That was it. No indication of what he was sick with or how serious it really was. My mind was left to fill in the blanks which created a lot of anxiety. To top it off, my father-in-law was not doing well, and it appeared that the esophageal cancer was going to win and win soon.

My husband was holding up on the outside, but I knew this added stress was a lot. On top of all of this, I had also asked him to come with me on a mission trip that we were leaving for on this particular Sunday and he had just started coming down with an awful cold. While sitting in church that day, I was falling apart and couldn’t even imagine how my husband was feeling. The stress of it all was pushing me over the edge and I left the sanctuary to retreat into my office.

I did that thing that you should never do, I decided I was going to open the bible, point to a verse and get an answer from God. I knew that wasn’t really going to work so I decided I would just sit there and read until God gave me something. That seemed like a better idea. I opened to the book of Psalm, partly because I always do, it’s in the middle, and partly because that’s where you should go when you are crying out to God. I started reading. I’m not sure how long I read before I hit Psalm 27:13 & 14, but boy did it jump out. So much so that I wrote in my bible these words, “WAIT! Gage getting medically dropped from the Navy & no info day 2.”

I started to cry because this was exactly what I needed to hear. Wait. It’s ok to wait, to wonder, to cry out, but trust God that you will see His goodness in the land of the living. It was right there in black and white and I believed it, wholeheartedly. It was a few more days before we were actually able to talk to him, but these verses helped me hold on. (The mission trip was great despite Rick being sick. He was so much help, and it started his journey into teaching. Unfortunately, the cancer did win, and his dad passed a week later. We were able to be there. Another God story.)

Fast forward to February 2019. That same son is married with a son on the way. I hadn’t thought of those verses in quite some time and came across them while reading through the bible in a year. I wrote in the margin next to the previous one, “Still waiting for him to come back to God - 2/2019”

Continue on to July 2023, reading through the bible again and came to these verses. I wrote “Glimpses of Hope 7/2023”. Six months later he was gone.

What do you do with that? When you know without a doubt that God gave you those verses so long ago and that even if you didn’t think about them often you believed the promise. You prayed for so many years for God’s mighty hand and His wonderful grace to reach in and change that piece of your heart that is out there living his own life. You believed you would see the goodness in the land of the living, but the one you prayed for, the one you thought and believed would change, left the land of the living of his own free will. How do you reconcile that?!!

Well, September 2026, you open your devotional “Praying Through Life’s Battles” by Rachel Wojo, and you read the one titled, “When Your Prayers Seemed Unanswered” with, you guessed it, Psalms 27:13 & 14 as the verses. You immediately don’t want to read it. It hurts just a little too much. But because this is what you do and you know you also need to work on this part of your heart, you read it anyway. And you see something. Something that hurts to admit, that causes more grief to rise up in you, but through the tears you know it’s right. You know it’s God showing you one more time that even though your prayers seem to go unanswered, they have never been unheard.

Because there is goodness in the land of the living. My daughter-in-law is growing in her faith and in confidence. My grandsons, while yes, a pain in the butt somedays, love Jesus, sing worship music all the time and want to know more about God. The oldest asked Jesus to be Lord of his life, and while I know he has a lot to learn we celebrate that! None of this, if I’m being honest, would have happened if Gage was still here. Life would be so different, but God would not be center of their lives the way it is right now.

While that is painful to admit, I know it’s true. It’s not the goodness that I wanted from the Lord. It’s not the life I want for me or for my family, but it is the life we have and there is still goodness right along with all the pain. It’s so weird how they can coexist.

I will always think of my son when I read those verses and there will always be some sadness that it did not turn out how I prayed, but God will continue to show us the goodness because He does not stop until all things are made new, made good. We might not see all the goodness here on earth, but sometimes He will give us glimpses. I believe he will continue to show me the “goodness of Lord”, and he will continue to show you too…if you let Him.

Until next time…stay anchored.