A Prayer for Those Living in Crisis
Crisis is so hard. It takes SO MUCH energy to navigate. The constant demand. The fear of the unknown. The need to pay such incredibly close attention. It’s exhausting. I got news yesterday that a friend from college, waiting for a liver transplant, just had her 6th liver fail. Six times she’s prepared and hoped and prayed and then nothing. Still waiting. Still praying. Still hoping.
Another friend who is chronically ill just learned she needs yet another surgery, but that surgery has to wait until after the other surgeries. Then she broke her thumb and now she can’t open her prescriptions by herself. She lives alone.
My heart goes out to anyone in a crisis. I pray for you right now. This minute. I pray that you can keep the insanity outside of you and that somehow you can find some place of quiet inside of you. Despite the fear. Despite the craziness. Despite the exhaustion. I pray God comes to you in real ways that you can see and feel as you crawl beyond this instance.
But a special prayer for those in a dark season of constant crisis. Perpetual crisis is a whole other level of fear and responsibility and exhaustion. Your burden is great and my humble prayers for you know no words. I know this place. This place with no knowing. Everything grows quiet among the beeps and emergency, and pressures of the unknown that most are blessed to never experience.
I lived in constant crisis for years as my late husband faced multiple health crises and eventual death. Dozens and dozens of trips to the ER. Countless hospitalizations. I couldn’t tell people how bad it really was. Who wants to hire a coach or a speaker whose unstable life is crumbling before her very eyes? I had to keep working as we had to eat. Someone had to pay all these medical bills.
A medical diagnosis is a terrible thing, but most of them come with a known path—maybe a terrible one, but known. It’s an entirely different experience to realize I was not on any known path, where no one could help me, and I had no idea all of the ways this would cost me.
Only after years of rest could I start to see the toll of the constant vigilance and care and struggle to survive. I paint it out now. I catch glimpses of that trauma in my art and in my memory and physical triggers and I start to see and remember. It’s so big I can’t take it all in at any given moment, but I can see it better than I could before.
My prayers are for you—you who share in this season of perpetual crisis. May you find space in the between the hard. May you find the small ephemeral blessing in each moment and find ways to abide there. May you find a deep well of faith. I hold that space with you right now in my prayers and in my paint…until you can find it for yourself.
