When My Heart is Faint...

"Hear my cry, O God,
listen to my prayer;
from the end of the earth I call to you
when my heart is faint.
Lead me to the rock
that is higher than I,
for you have been my refuge,
a strong tower against the enemy." - Psalm 61:1-3


I feel like I have been surrounded by a lot of pain and death lately.

A couple weeks ago, I had two coworkers lose their mom, one coworker lost her brother (the second brother of hers to die in the last few months), and then another coworker was in the hospital with a blood clot in his lungs. This all happened within days of each other. That same week I had received an email from my good friend in New Mexico to pray for a friend of hers with cancer and for a newborn who had little chances of living long.

In the midst of all that, I had learned of the bombings in Uganda. My friend Lena is in Uganda and turns out the little restaurant that was bombed was one of her favorite places to go to. If it weren't for a head cold, she would have been there that night. I have never been so thankful for head colds!

And then of course there is Daisy. A sweet little 6 year old who had been struggling with cancer this last year. As of a few months ago she was cancer free, but just within the last couple weeks, it came back full force. She is now going through chemotherapy and is down to 36 pounds. She can hardly keep food down anymore.

Additionally, as of last night, there have been three fires in our area. One even less than ten miles from my house. People are losing their homes.


This isn't to be depressing or to be morbid. This is just life. Sometimes everything is beautiful and there couldn't be one complaint. Other times, like now, it seems like everything is crashing down around us and there is nothing we can do about it.

Or is there?

Daisy's father, Britt Merrick who is a pastor in Carpenteria, wrote a book called "Big God." Neglecting all my other book commitments, I decided last night I needed to read it. A father who watches his daughter suffer and all the while writes a book about how big and amazing our God is? That's worth my attention.

Here's what he says:

"When crisis hits, where do your heart and mind turn to? What do you do as a Christian when the doctor tells you that your five-year-old daughter has cancer? How do you deal with that? If you're a Christian, your mind goes to Jesus. That's just where you go."

We run to Jesus. We run to His Word. We run to His Word because we already have it hidden in our hearts...

"Precepts and passages came quickly. And we didn't even have to open a Bible. We didn't need someone to come along and quote Scripture to us. It was just there, because we had done one simple thing in life: we had committed to reading our Bibles...

"Have it in your heart and have it in your head. Let the Word of Christ dwell richly in you. Because when someone looks you in the eyes and says your five-year-old has [cancer]... you better know some Bible."


Thank you Jesus for your word! "Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path." (Psalm 119:105)

I thank you that when my heart is faint, "you keep count of my tossings; put my tears in your bottle." (Psalm 56:8)

I thank you that "as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are YOUR ways higher than my ways and YOUR thoughts than my thoughts." (Isaiah 55:9)

and I thank you that we can "count it all joy when we meet trials of various of kinds, for testing of our faith produces steadfastness... that we may be lacking in nothing." (James 1:2-4) I lack in nothing with you Lord!