Prayer

1Th 5:17  Pray without ceasing.

This has been a very sad week for me. Sad in the fact that my friends and acquaintance are suffering and one died this week. She was not a close friend. I never had pleasure of actually meeting her in person. We worked on Sistahfaith together. She was my Facebook friend and a very large presence with her many funny, cheerful and colorful status updates. I could always go to my home page and see her beautiful face. She helped a lot of struggling writers. She seemed to be tireless in her work. Her death came as a shock to many. She left a twelve year old daughter. I can't help but feel bad her. I can only imagine the heartache she must be feeling right now.

The night she died I had a dream about her. She was giving CPR to a women, but she was to weak to continue. I guess that was the Lord's way of telling me, her journey is over, she gave until her last breath. Her heart was just to weak to go any further. She gave her all. The bible says, to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. She's with Jesus,and at rest.

The other day a friend posted on my Facebook wall that she missed our chats. I have had very little time to call my friends lately. I love our chats as well. We played phone tag for a couple of days, and finally connected. We talked for a long time. We had much catching up to do. I didn't realize it had been almost a year since we talked. What she shared with me about her last year broke my heart. Not because she sounded sad or anything, quite the contrary, she was joyful and praising God. Her three year old grandson had to have his eye removed. She has had several major surgeries to remove insidious cancer growth. She had to go to the doctor today, because they think she has more abnormal growth. As she was telling me all that she had been through in her sweet giggly voice I was feeling slightly annoyed.

I din't get annoyed at the fact that she praised God. I got annoyed because I used to work in surgical oncology and I know the seriousness of her diagnosis. I left surgical oncology a year after my husband death. I was emotionally drained and I felt like an empty failure. One of my favorite patient had died of the same cancer my friend is fighting. My patient and I somehow became friends. I used to have lunch with her. She comforted me during my husband death. The other staff hid her death certificate from me. When I realized I hadn't heard from her I pulled her chart to get her phone number, only to be met with her death certificate. I was devastated and inconsolable. My co-workers thought I got to close to the patients and their families. I never learned how not to  grieve for them. Or "not feel," as one of my co-workers put it. I burned-out of oncology after five years.

For some reason, before my friend told me of her diagnosis; I gushed on and on about the power of God to heal. For no reason at that point that I knew of. She let me know that she had a test coming to see if she has developed ovarian cancer, and that if we didn't see each other in this life we will definitely see each other when we're with Jesus. I song the lyrics to the song I can only imagine. She asked me to think of her every time I heard I the song. She gave me words of encouragement. She said to, "keep your eyes on Jesus and others so that I won't focus on myself, because that would lead to selfishness and selfishness lead to a loss of joy. Don't lose your joy." She helped me to realized that is what my problem has been. She made it plain and simple, where I tried to complicate it in my head. That's what my problem has been since I moved into this apartment. And just maybe she needed to hear about Abba's power to heal.

I hung up feeling slightly sad. She posted the video on my wall. I had two choices. I could cry, or I could call all the intercessors and prayer warrior I know around the USA, and pray for my friend. I chose the latter. I called Florida, California, Detroit, Minnesota and called for prayer watch. We prayed until we felt the heavens open it's ears to our cries.

She posted a prayer request on Facebook. We were already praying. The next day she got a good report from the doctors. I needed to hear how not to allow myself to become selfish, she may have needed to hear about Abba's healing. We all need prayer, we all need each other. I told the intercessors that she got a good report. They simply said, "we know."

Fearless