when you pray crazy prayers

It's hard to hear big ugly words coming from such a small beautiful place.

I HATE you mommy!  I do not like you at ALL!  I wish you were NOT my mommy!  And I wish I didn't have a brother either!

Sticks and stones break your bones...
and what was that part about words never hurting?
The hate-filled words of your child break more than bones.  

I guarded myself from their meaning early this morning.  It's not the first time I've seen them coming like arrows for me.  By the grace of God, a deep breath with eyes closed makes their penetration into my heart less painful.  

It's only a matter of minutes before the attacking screams turn to repentant cries.  And the roller coaster ride of Graves disease barrels forward.  
I hold and hug and rock her on my knee.  We talk about how it could have gone better, knowing that the same sequence will repeat itself again before the week's end.  And then I wrap her up in it...unconditional love...limitless grace...that I promise to offer every day...all the time.  I whisper silent pleading prayers that it will be enough to heal the wounds in both our hearts.

Lately I have spent many of my words on our experience with Lucy's diabetes diagnosis.  Initially the identification of Graves Disease seemed like a minor sideshow...but it quickly took center stage.

The doctor told us almost as if it were an afterthought...
  by the way - her thyroid hormones are also elevated so we are testing her for Graves Disease.  

I was already so overwhelmed with the learning curve that comes with T1D that I kept this additional information tucked away in a separate compartment of my brain until I had the capacity to open it back up and understand.  

When the Graves diagnosis was confirmed I took the bottles of pills they gave me and figured out how to slide them down her throat in a puddle of yogurt.  I assumed the latest of her autoimmune disorders would wait patiently in the corner while I got a good handle on the one right in front of me...I was wrong.  This one didn't sit quietly.  This one demanded my attention with sobbing and yelling and fits of rage.  I quickly realized that it was a box of explosives I had so naively set to the side.  Hormonal imbalances in a five-year-old are no joke.

Yesterday I wrote about grace but today I want to tell you that we are daily living it...  
...the receiving and the giving.  
At some point we must practice what we preach...or what we have heard preached.  
Otherwise it will evaporate and leave nothing lasting behind.

This season of my life has made me desperate for God's grace.  
As my pastor said on Sunday...in this time and place in which we live we are not desperate for much.

It is a blessing but if we're not careful...it becomes our curse.  This life of privilege we live.
When you live in a world where you can pretty much get anything you want with a credit card and a smile you start to feel like you don't need anyone or anything else.
And that lie slowly lulls us to sleep until a desperate situation wakes us back up again to this truth...

Desperation is the fertile ground upon which our faith grows.

It just might be the craziest prayer we ever pray but it also might be the most important...

God give me a desperate heart.

In the place where I come to the end of myself...
where I don't know what to do...
where I have no control...
where things are beyond my understanding...
where I am desperate...
I plead for grace.
I beg for it to stand guard over my lips.
To bring gentleness to my eyes.
To hold still my hands and heart.
And it does.

There have been seasons of less stress in which I have snapped and lost my ever-loving mind and lived full of regret and yet this one has been ushered in with winds of peace.  In my desperation I have watched my faith in myself grow small as my faith in Him has grown big.  My reserves would have long since dried up, but by His power we flourish like a well-watered garden.

What do you say?  Might we be brave enough to step together onto the shaky ground of desperation and watch faith grow right before your eyes?  Might we be ready to to stop avoiding desperate situations or trying to plow through them as fast as we can?  Might we instead allow for the discomfort of the things we can not change to change us?

The comfortable seasons of life lead us to see Jesus as we imagine Him to be.  
But these days of desperation, they take us beyond imagination to the truth of who He really is... ...everything we need.

God give me a desperate heart.