When someone you love is sick, really truly sick, it nearly literally breaks your heart. The only reason I add “nearly” is because my heart doesn’t physically break in two.

But it feels like it does.

It feels like it is smashed into a thousand tiny glittering pieces, throbbing in loss and desperation to help the one you love. But when they are so sick that they are beyond your physical capacity to help them, and they must resolve to get better themselves, your heart does this shatterdance. The pieces spin round, tossing up in the dark of night, scattering sideways in every heavy conversation, and twirl violently during whispered, desperate prayers.

The only way I truly know how to reign in these shatterdancing pieces is to write. I’m too weak to trust God, though I am well aware of the consequence of not doing so. I’m too stubborn to seek comfort in prayer, in confiding in others, or in becoming vulnerable in the normal ways of leaning on a friend. So instead, I write, hoping that through my words I can find sublime catharsis. That my soul will be repaired through my own devices. That my Love can be healed through my futile attempt at constructing a well-crafted sentence or a clever turn of phrase.

But she can’t. And my shatterdancing heart needs more than my logical human mind to bring an enveloping peace. It needs God, and it needs Him now. Only He is capable of direction and guidance. Only He can bring me through this dark and confusing personal season, and into the light of knowing how to help my Love. Only He can open the window when it is so obvious that He has shut every single door in my proverbial house.

Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. If any of you lacks wisdom you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault and it will be given to you. But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like the wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind.
(James 1:2-6)

God, give me wisdom.
Lord help me to consider my trials pure joy.
Father, let me persevere and become mature and complete.