Endurance...

Afterwards, my little family of four sat in the car...all in painful shock. There was silence mingled with tears. And then my father turned and said to all of us:

"We had hoped that this would be a short race, that this particular hardship would end sooner rather than later, but this is not the case. We have been given a marathon..."

Those words have helped me a lot in the last year...and not just in the matter in which he was specifically referring to, in fact, in a lot of ways that time in my life in which we were all praying for a miracle so intensely only for the answer to be:
"No, not now"

It was the first tiny drop in a much bigger lesson about prayer:
The question is how long can you prayer? The question is how long can faith last? The question is how long before you give up?

Not long after that inital drop, came another, in a lot of ways this one felt worse...this drop seemed to pound like rain.
Once again I was brought to tears in prayer for another...and once again it seemed the answer was :
"No, not now"

In the past few days another drop has fallen and the Devil was quick to bring up the past two drops as "examples" of unanswered prayer...but today as I wrote in my journal the words of my father came back to me:

No, my prayers are not in vain. Saying my prayers were not answered...this a lie. We are faced with a marathon, not a short distance. Lord increase my endurance-might my faith in answered prayers be as long as my very life-may I go to my death praying for those that have been layed on my heart with such intensity that only tears can express the burden.
To pray until the answer is:
"Yes, today is the day that I show my Glory, today is the day that I show my Power, today is the day I show Mercy."


I believe that answer will come, or the burden to pray would have stopped a long time ago. I would have forgotten...I would have moved on...circumstances and life would not continue to remind me of You.
But, this is not the case and I can now only beg for endurance, for this battle will be long....
But it is already won.