Sweet friend

I had a couple of posts in mind for today.  One about work.  One about marriage.  Waking up with a little precious three year old in my arms gave me plenty of material.  But then I felt God telling me to write about my sweet friend. 

This amazing woman became a friend of mine in 2004 when we shared a Pilates trainer.  She had this radical transformation in her faith and went from being a casual work out buddy to a strong sister in the faith and accountability partner.  She prayed a prayer of commitment over me and my marriage just moments before I walked down the aisle.  She prayed with me during the infertility years.  And then during the NICU time.  I have prayed with her as she reconnected to her faith and saw the obstacles she would face in that return.  She had the wind knocked out of her a couple of years ago when her youngest daughter, then 4, was diagnosed with a rare and aggressive form of cancer.  We prayed over and over again, and still do, for that sweet one who has now been in remission since last fall.  She is also an aspiring writer, well she's an actual published writer, and we had the great joy of attending a conference together this summer as God revealed just one more page of what we should write. 

I know that many of you who read this little blog pray.  I have been somewhat of a slacker connecting with her this past month as she enters an exciting but unnerving new season.  She is pregnant.  And due in March.  Her husband just moved overseas as his job relocated him for some amount of time (likely one to two years).  She has gone through this before, a few years ago, but never pregnant and with a child that regularly gets cancer check-ups.  She is still stateside until their family visas come through.  When she moves, likely sometime before year end, she will be overseas, using a new medical system, having a new baby, away from family and friends, oh and she will have to home school her two school-aged daughters as she bounces back from having a baby since there is no international school available to them. 

Did your jaw just drop open?  Well mine did.  Then I dropped to my knees.  She is one of the most gifted, uplifting, truth-speaking, funniest, coolest girls in town.  I am going to miss her like nobody's business.  But I know God is doing this huge amazing work in her life, and I would never stand in the way of that. 

So would you pray for her today?  Would you pray specifically that their paperwork would finish quickly so their family could be reunited, and that God would work in this crazy miraculous way to orchestrate it all so the results would even be a testament to the people at the company working on it?  Would you pray for an overwhelming sense of love and protection and peace and assurance over her and her two girls as they are without a husband and daddy right now?  And would you pray for her husband, that he would do this rock star job and be such an acknowledged leader and talent at his company, and that he would feel secure and strong until he has his family back under one roof? 

I think it is crazy cool for the church community to be able to band together to lift up one of its own and see the unfathomable results that follow.  I thought you might join me for this miracle ride.  Here is what I am praying over her today:

Col. 1 -  We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, because we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love you have for all God’s people...For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you. We continually ask God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives, so that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, and giving joyful thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of his holy people in the kingdom of light.

Deut. 1 - The Lord our God said to us at Horeb, “You have stayed long enough at this mountain....See, I have given you this land. Go in and take possession of the land the Lord swore he would give to your fathers—to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob—and to their descendants after them.”

Eph. 3 - For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name.  I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge - that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.