Praising God for the Hard Things and then Learning to Let Go and Trust God.

Many decades ago I read a book called, “From Prison to Praise.” It was written by a man who not only found Jesus in prison, bu also found grace in praising God in absolutely everything.

First, a disclaimer: Though I have done this is both small and large challenges over my life, in stages of my life that aren’t particularly difficult, I tend to forget to praise.  But in the years of hard challenges, it has had some amazing impacts on my struggles, even though it is not a magic incantation.  Just like I have experienced miracles of healing, I have also had health issues that weren’t healed, and my mother died by inches over fourteen years of Alzheimer’s, and my husband struggled for years with both heart and lung issues, and died from a second round of cancer. Healing is not the norm.  If it was, the earth would have standing-room only.  To me healings are so we know when we don’t experience miracles that there’s a purpose and the grace to grow from our struggles whatever they are.

But, that said, two ways of handling life challenges have definitely brought relief at times.

The first is praising God in whatever our affliction is. 

My first experience was with an ineffective toilet installed with pipes in a concrete slab running up hill to a septic tank.  Guess what doesn’t run uphill!  After many failed attempts to reach the plumber responsible for this, I began seethe with anger and frustration, but finally having read the book about Praising, in desperation I began to “plunge and praise.” Well, it didn’t “cure” the plumbing problem, but it began to focus me on God and the love I had experienced.  It lifted my spirits and changed my whole attitude. So, when I finally spotted the “evil” plumber in Kroger’s, I stopped him before he could run, thanking him profusely for the pitiful plumbing job, explaining that because of it God was getting much praise and I was receiving grace.  He looked at me like I had lost my mind and fled.

Some years after that I began to experience severe pain in my hands and wrists.  In retrospect, I think it was fibromyalgia triggered by stress.  But once again, I would praise God when having to do housework in pain. This time whenever I managed to do this, the pain would let up when I would focus on the love of God. And the pain finally stopped happening.

More years passed and then in the wee hour of the morning shortly before Christmas, I woke up with a horrible throbbing pain in my eye. It was excruciating. There were no ophthalmologists in our small town then.  Knowing we would need to drive forty miles and with my husband recovering from the flu, I decided to lie on the couch in the living room where the Christmas tree was and try to tough it out until it was time to get ready to go. I began to praise God with my teeth gritted, not at all sincere about it. After a few moments, I sensed a presence by a table near the window.  I cannot describe it, but the sense of incredible love coming from it made me sure it was Jesus. I began to praise and thank with both will and sheer joy, even though the pain continued.  Finally, after a while, I fell asleep. And when the sun coming in the window woke me up, my eye was healed and I never had any trouble with it again.

I’m in my eighties now and often now when facing difficulty without getting answers to prayer, I focus on accepting the difficulty.  It usually involves letting go of my vision of how I want things to be.  I think in our later years, letting go is what brings peace.

Praising and accepting seem almost two parts of the same process.  And the small or large “miracles” show us we are heard, but also help us learn and grow through grace in the hard times.