I Am Helped

For I, the LORD your God, hold your right hand; it is I who say to you, “Fear not. I am the one who helps you.”

—Isaiah 41:13 (ESV)

I didn’t want to go.

I had to, I knew. We planned to kick off a conference the next day, and I was one of the leaders and speakers. I dreaded the thought of standing up on a stage and opening my mouth in front of a hundred strangers. I couldn’t hide my speech difficulties anymore. Within the first sentence, everyone would hear a lisp, wonder why I talked funny. I didn’t want to expose myself to the questions and speculation, didn’t want to open the door to hard, painful conversations. I wanted to hide.

But I had a job to do, as much as I didn’t want to do it.

Help, God. Please. Help me.

Help came, in the most unusual way.

I met her less than twenty-four hours after my arrival. Paula. A hotel employee responsible for serving our team lunch before the conference began. She didn’t say much during our meeting, content to refill our glasses and remove our plates. Although I noticed her, I didn’t think much about her.

Until our meeting ended and we started to clear out of the room.

That’s when she stopped me on my way out the door. She started by asking me if my lunch had been okay. She’d noticed I hadn’t eaten much, and a fellow team member mentioned in passing that I’d recently recovered from significant cancer surgery. She lowered her voice, paused, and then dropped her bomb: “I just found out I have cancer. Breast cancer. I meet with my oncologist for the first time tomorrow.”

Just that fast, two strangers became friends. What followed over the next few moments included a beautiful, honest exchange of stories. Then came her questions, starting with the big one: “How did you get through it?”

I didn’t know whether she claimed any faith or belief in God. No matter. She asked an honest question, and I gave her an honest answer.

“God. I believe God is real, and He loves you and me more than we know. He is the one who helped me through. I wouldn’t have made it without my faith in Him.”

The minute the words left my mouth, I knew why I was at the conference.

To help a woman in the middle of a hard thing know the love of a real God.

And at the same time, to rediscover God’s help for me.

The writer of Psalm 46: 1 said these words: “God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble.”

Right here, right now, God is able and willing to help us walk through the hard thing. For me that day, it involved standing up on a stage again and speaking to an audience. For Paula, it was walking into an oncologist’s office for the first time. And as only God can do, He helped both of us by weaving our similar stories together in a divinely crafted moment.

My good friend Becky is in one of those wretched waiting spaces, the kind that could dramatically impact her life by either its resolution or lack thereof. From the darkness of her hard place, she asked this question: “What lessons have you learned in life’s waiting room? How do you survive the tension? What does God teach us here?”

Ugh. I know a thing or two about life’s waiting room. About sitting in a hard place and waiting for help to come.

It’s painful, exhausting, infuriating, [insert expletive here].

Still. I must concede waiting spaces are ripe for lesson learning, including revelations like

I know, I know. I threw up a little while writing those last words.

But here’s the deal: It’s one thing to talk about faith in a God who comes to our rescue, another to live as if you’re banking on it. Like it or not, we humans rely an awful lot on our ability to control and manage circumstances. Even worry is an effort to control.

But real faith is a letting go. A releasing of the what-if’s when everything in you wants to tighten your grip. It’s allowing yourself to free fall into the unknown because you have absolute confidence that waiting at the other end are arms big enough to catch you, help you, and make you whole.

Easy to write, not easy to live. But the payout is peace.

Let my people go, became God’s rallying cry, that they might worship me. At the heart of liberty—of being let go—is worship. But at the heart of worship is rest—a stopping from all work, all worry, all scheming, all fleeing—to stand amazed and thankful before God and his work. There can be no real worship without true rest.

—MARK BUCHANAN, THE REST OF GOD