Earth Has No Sorrow That Heaven Can’t Heal
Earth Has No Sorrow That Heaven Can’t Heal
One morning upon arriving to work I got a phone call. It’s the phone call that all parent’s dread. The call that turns everything upside down. It was the school counselor from my child’s middle school insisting I come. I had just started a new job so I was adamant that it must be an emergency. All I remember was her saying, “Yes, come now!” and me calling my fiancé screaming and crying. Nothing quite prepares you on how to react to someone telling you that your daughter is hearing voices and wants to end her life. Nothing. It pierces your heart, it makes you question everything, and you will never be the same.
And so began a two day stint of me and my daughter camping out in an ER waiting on placement in a mental health facility. Two things that ripped all the decisions from my hands were the fact she told a school official these hard things and I had not yet been enrolled in health insurance. The state steps in, they make the decisions, and they tell you what is going to happen. All you can do is sit with your baby, hold their hand and try and make them feel better. Which is ironic, they won’t, not for a while. So then you pray, and you try and read your Bible. And the peace that God promises seems far and unattainable. It’s raw and there is no comfort.
It was close to 4am the second morning we were in the ER and the nurse convinced me to go home and shower. Plus it gave me the opportunity to take my other daughter to school and kiss my fiancé. As I left the hospital I realized I didn’t have the card that gets you in the gate of our apartment complex. Sounds silly, but at 4 am it’s a bit of a mess. There is no way to get in. So I prayed and asked God for the gate to be open, so that I didn’t have to wake anyone up. As I left the hospital a truck pulled in front of me and was in front of me the entire way home. It is really noticeable so early when no one is around. As I got closer to the complex I saw him signal and pull in. He opened the gate. I drove right in. You may feel this is insignificant but it was a small miracle but a definite attention grabber.
I don’t know you but what I do know is if you are reading this you probably hear from God similarly to me, through music. I will often wake up with lyrics in my head, singing a tune, and I can almost relate any situation to a song. And on this morning, God showed up powerfully, to be honest it had been awhile. I parked my car, and I can tell you that of all the feelings I have ever felt, weariness was the top of the list. I leaned my head back and heard these words, “come out of sadness from wherever you’ve been…” I knew there was something to it. I googled the lyrics and the song, Come as You Are by Crowder came up. In the stillness of that early morning, I pressed play, these words came rushing in:
Come out of sadness
From wherever you’ve been
Come broken hearted
Let rescue begin
Come find your mercy
Oh sinner come kneel
Earth has no sorrow
That heaven can’t heal
Earth has no sorrow
That heaven can’t heal
I had been looking for peace for two days. But there is no peace to be had when your baby is sick. What I was missing was that peace was around me in the chaos. I never had the control I thought was being ripped from my hands. And although I had dedicated my little girl to Jesus I had never laid her at his feet. I was deep in the sorrow, I was buried by it. I had to make a choice. The choice was to remember God’s goodness. I had to see that my strength was going to come from Him and Him alone. No doctor, no relative, no friend, no one could help me like Jesus. No one could save her but Him. I laid my little sick baby at his feet and died to the idea that her life wasn’t going to be sunshine and roses just because I willed it to be, it was going to be dark and twisty sometimes, it was going to be hard and gloomy, but I knew that God’s good would prevail.
The road since hasn’t been easy. I can’t tell you how many times I played that song. How many times I’ve cried and questioned every decision I’ve had to make for her. But I haven’t been alone. Not for a second. God has healed a part of my heart that I didn’t know needed healing. It was the part that questioned my worth to my Savior. Worship doesn’t always happen within the walls of the church. It can happen at four o’clock in the morning, when nothing makes sense. It can happen when we’ve come to the end of ourselves.
Earth has no sorrows that heaven can’t heal…that is so true friends.
