Strengthened in Inner Being

For background on my journey of 11 weeks of bed rest after my membranes ruptured prematurely at 17 weeks 6 days. (For more info on this occurrence pProm, see kanalen.org/prom).

Dear Friends, November 10, 2009

I continue to be thankful for all of the love, cards, and prayers you are sending to support my family and each other. My husband, David, remarked that what amazed him the most was the expansiveness and diversity of the prayers people are sending. They reminded him that there are so many ways we could be blessed by our current situation no matter what the outcome is. Since I stare at the same four walls everyday, I feel particularly blessed that your outreach is a unique expression of who you are. Your cards are a patchwork tapestry hanging by my bedside reminding me of the faces I miss. As I pray for the special life inside me, the greatest gifts are those that remind me of the unique beings God grows in all of us. I have appreciated all sentiments from the profound to the practical.

Many have joined us in praying Ephesians 3:14-21. My godmother wrote to say she had memorized it within the week. I must admit as often as I lean on this verse, I cannot commit the whole thing to memory. Instead, certain phrases resonate with me and live in my mind and body like mantras. Recently, it has been the phrase, “strengthened in your inner being.” Truly, I pray as many do who are sick, for physical strength. I hope my womb will be healed. But I have realized after four weeks that this might not happen. The obvious miracle may not come; God’s work is yet to be revealed. Until then, we wait and wait, and become accustomed to the reality of our situation--either nothing changes or it gets worse. I remarked on this to a close friend who is a pediatric cardiologist and asked, “How can you stand it? Either you know it is bad or you don’t know what it is. As a doctor so often your options are to deliver “no news” or “bad news.” She laughed at how often that was true. And said, “What I do is not so different than you, Beth. I practice medicine because I want to be there for people no matter what their situation is. And in being there, I want to give people hope.

My original midwife jokes with me often after some particularly pessimistic prognosis, that it’s okay, “because you believe in divine intervention anyway.” I’ve had to correct her when she suggested this is the reason I’ve stubbornly gotten as far as I have. It is not divine intervention that I expect to swoop down from above and defy medical statistics. Instead I place my hope in the “strengthening in our inner being,” the unexplained healing in the “no news” of medicine that I know to be possible in our body, in our minds, but even more in our spirits. This strengthening is happening to me each day. I do not have to wait for it. I wake up amazed that my inner being is still going, that we are as strong as we are that day. The strengthening does not show up on the weekly ultrasound or the blood tests. But it shows up in my prayers and in yours, in the meals and the notes, the emails from strangers on internet support groups who’ve experienced what I am, and all the ways God keeps our inner beings engaged, strong, and making new or deeper connections.

I pray for you all as individuals and as a church body. I am aware that the Apostle Paul wrote his letter to a whole church body that needed strengthening. I take strength from the amazing ways you are coming together to strengthen the inner beings of the church and of each other.
With Love, Beth