On Friday, a friend drove me 45 minutes to visit my 14-year-old daughter Maggie in the hospital. My friend waited while I visited with my daughter, and then drove me home again.
I picked up a small suitcase, retrieved my 12-year-old son, Stephen, from his class at the New-York Historical Society, and the two of us got on a bus to another city to visit my eldest daughter, Elizabeth, who is in a treatment program to help her overcome anorexia.
Because of an accident on the highway, the trip took nearly six hours instead of four, so another friend I was staying with picked us up at the bus station late in the evening.
This friend drove my son and I too see Elizabeth on Saturday morning, and then Stephen and I went to a museum on Saturday afternoon. We stayed overnight, treated to dinner and chocolate souffles.
On Sunday we got on the bus back to New York, so that I’d be able to visit Maggie again on Monday.
We arrived home, tired, at 8:30 p.m. to find a jumble of boxes on the floor. While I was gone, my mom’s Bible study group had sent a huge delivery of food.
There were frozen meals and fruit, milk and vegetables. There were eggs, cereal, yogurt and even mini cupcakes. The refrigerator was packed solid. It was my own personal miracle, manna in a wilderness of exhaustion.
There have been several times in the past couple of years when healthcare professionals have peered at me and asked with genuine curiosity, “How about you? How do you stay strong?”
I smile and respond, “I have a great network. I have the most amazing friends in the world.”
It’s true. I have friends who drive me to save me time, who give me a place to sleep, who bring me meals, and most of all who pray for me. I have friends I’ve never met, and friends I see all the time.
I am not alone in my struggles at all: I have Christ with me, present in every person who reaches out in one way or another to shoulder my burdens.
Not surprisingly, knowing that a difficult situation draws me closer to Jesus changes the way I look at it. That one piece of knowledge transforms a challenge that, on the surface, looks like a disaster into something much more palatable: a way to grow in faith.
