Too much to ask

it seemed too much to ask
of one small virgin
that she should stake shame
against the will of God.
all she had to hold to
were those soft, inward
flutterings
and the remembered sting
of a brief junction--spirit
with flesh.
who would think it
more than a dream wish?
an implausible, laughable
defense.


and it seems much
too much to ask me
to be part of the
different thing--
God's shocking, unorthodox,
unheard of Thing
to further heaven's hopes
and summon God's glory.
(More Luci Shaw, because I can't stop reading her this time of year)

Today I was barely able to function because of the pain in my abdomen. I was short tempered with my family. I went through motions of preparing meals and cleaning up, but I cried big tears of this is too much to ask. I tried to rest, but I find it almost impossible to relax for a moment when the stabbing is so bad. I feel guilty for being in bed. I resist taking any pain killers because they really don't work, and I am still so wounded by my former need for IV narcotics when I was pregnant and my kidney was blocked. The opinions everyone had about my pain and treatment during that time was horrific. I can tell you my body's response to pain and to pain medication is not normal. I know there is still something very wrong inside my body. Besides the endometriosis which we know is still there and growing I suspect I now have some very bad adhesions from my newest surgery. There are no good answers for these issues.

While I laid here in bed begging God for some kind of relief I realized that I mostly pray for deliverance for His glory rather than grace to submit and endure for His glory. None of this makes any sense. Has my faith grown at all? Is God asking too much of Danica? Is He asking too much of our family? Is His continued allowance of suffering in my own life unreasonable? Madeleine L'Engle wrote, "We are all asked to do more than we can do. Every hero and heroine of the Bible does more than he would of thought it possible to do, from Gideon to Esther to Mary. It is only after we have been enabled to say, "Be it unto me according to Your Word," that we can accept the paradoxes of Christianity. Christ comes to live with us, bringing an incredible promise of God's love, but never are we promised there will be no pain, no suffering, no death, but rather that these griefs are the very road to eternal life. In Advent we prepare for the coming of all Love, that Love will redeem all brokenness, wrongness, hardness of heart which have afflicted us.

The prayer of my heart tonight is a simple one following the heart of Mary, "Be it unto me according to Your Word."