Growing pains

Tonight’s prayer meeting was a special time. Aside from praying, I went there to see a very dear friend, a woman whom God used in many ways. You remember her, she was one of the subjects in my blog before. I wanted to see Dr. Steve and Karen Lynip for the last time before they leave the Philippines for good.

Karen doesn’t’ know, but the moment I met her and Dr. Steve, I have always looked up to their relationship and wished in my heart of hearts that someday my husband and I would be like them. Serving God together as a couple.

They invited us for couple’s bible study a few times but we never went. Aside from the fact that we live so far from them, hubby is still quite young in the faith and wasn’t too keen on things like these. And as a wife, I knew that I should not force him as his time with God will just come. All these times I have longed to get closer to Karen and looked up to her as a wonderful woman of God and yeah, to get recipes for her to-die-for-cookies ). I had all these scenes in my mind on how great it would be to serve God as a couple just like her and Dr. Steve. But these thoughts were never shared to anyone, not even to my best friend May.

Until now.

At the end of the prayer meeting Pastor Arnel invited the Lynips to come in front and say their goodbyes to the church. It was like any other goodbyes except when Dr. Steve mentioned something about their two children whom they are still praying for. It struck me real hard.

Here was a couple whom I have bee n so in love with and I had all these notions on how they lived life happy ever after. But Dr. Steve said they have their own share of pains. How can they openly say this in front of hundreds of people! How can they share unashamedly that they too have their own crosses to bear!

Then tears kept flowing. God liberated me that very moment and comforted me with the fact that as He did not leave the Lynips in their pain, so will He with me.

I realized that admitting one’s pain is not a sign of weakness but of surrender that the God that we serve bears our pain with us. Just as God has been patient with my growth, then so will He be with the growth of our “pains”.

A loved one may still be groping in darkness and you may have been praying for him for so long, do not loose hope. As Karen said, “while waiting, grow up and make him yearn for that difference that God has done in you.”