Ask and You Really Will Receive

 

I don’t get it.  I asked for my loved to be healed, and yet they died.  I don’t get it.  I asked for my financial situation to be resolved, and yet I am still in mounds of debt.  I don’t get it.  I asked God to help me pass the test, and yet my grade was a big fat F.  I asked for that special Christmas present when I was five years old, and yet that puppy was not under the Christmas tree.  The Gospel says, “Ask and you shall you receive.”    So often we find ourselves asking and seemingly not receiving.  Perhaps in all those moments, we actually have received.

I would like to bring this now to a very personal level.  I share this, in hope that you might come to realize that our Father truly gives us what we need.  My mother was born in 1941.  At the age of four, she was diagnosed with Type 1, Juvenile Diabetes.  For so many who live with this disease, it is a lifetime of living with the difficult maintenance of insulin/sugar levels and the many complications that come with it.  This was particularly true for someone who dealt with the disease in the years my mother did.  I still today see her sitting at our kitchen table preparing the syringe of insulin she had to take.  In those days, those were real needles, long and sharp.  Each day, she would inject one into her thigh.  Many days, she would not be feeling well, because of sugar levels that were off.  This would throw her immune system into chaos and everyday illnesses would become exacerbated.

In time, mom would develop other illnesses, including heart and vascular issues and breast cancer, which led to a double mastectomy.  Through all of it, she had a positive attitude, never looking for pity.  She never wanted any of us, her family members, to limit the joys of our own lives because of her sufferings.  The simple things in life, like reading and sewing, became sources of great joy in her own life.

The culmination of her life of suffering would come in the period from 1997 to 1998.  While she experienced great joy at the birth of her first grandson, my son, in April of 1997, the months that followed would bring some serious acute medical issues.  Incurable infections on her legs led to the ultimate need to amputate parts of both of those legs.  Her body fought against this and she entered into cardiac distress,  In April of 1998, as the one year birthday of her grandson approached, she was hospitalized in intensive care, needing the help of medical technology to keep her alive.

And so I asked.  In fact, I remembered today’s words of Jesus, “Ask and you shall receive.”  I asked that she be saved.  I wanted her to go on physically living and being with us.  I wanted her to see her grandson and any future grandchildren grow up.  And so I asked, and yet my prayer seemed to go unanswered.  On April 9^th, 1998, the Lord called her home.

At first, to me, it was like I had asked for an egg and got a scorpion.  I had asked for a fish and got a snake.  I knocked and the door was closed tight.  So many, including perhaps many of you reading this reflection, have had similar experiences.

It would take me months and perhaps years to realize the truth that God had indeed answered my prayers.  For in her death, that which had led to my mother’s physical incompleteness, if you will, was defeated.  She was whole again, in the comfort of the Lord’s loving embrace.  And while I did not have my mother physically with me any longer, I was given so much.  For I had the experience of witnessing her own endurance through a lifetime of suffering.  This would be with me always to help me through the challenges of my own life.  I was still experiencing my mother’s love.  I had the reality of the ultimate hope, and by that, I don’t mean wishful thinking that things would get better.  No, I mean the ultimate hope in eternal life, won for us by our savior.  I was confident my mother was getting to experience that in the present moment and for all eternity, and someday, if it is God’s will, so will I.

The one whom we get to call Father never gives a scorpion or a snake.  He is indeed opening the door for us.  Thank you, Father, for hearing our prayers.

 

-            The Servant