Prayer – Carrie In Writing

Faith, Hope, Personal Reflection, Prayer

Surrender

July 13, 2022July 13, 2022 Carrie Sue Barnes

“Cause you know just what we need before we say a word.”

I drove to Sheboygan today loudly singing songs in between talking to the Holy Spirit. I swear I could feel my sister praying for me from heaven. One of her favorites started playing, “Good, Good Father” by Chris Tomlin, and when these lyrics reached my ears, they looped round my mind a few times while the song continued on unheard. He already knows, I thought. He is in control.

It was a moment of surrender, which isn’t the easiest for any of us, I’d say, especially in the traumatic times.

Whether we believe in God as I do or the universe or nature or any other power above us, we all have a pull inside us to surrender. To give up an impossible attempt at being in control. We chase the relief of letting go. The peace of that surrender calls to us– peace that is oh so hard to make our own.

For a moment there, that peace rushed in and filled cracks and wounds and voids. Filled them whole. And even as that tide of healing slipped back out, it left all those places coated in the sweet holy water of real peace. And there was just a little more strength in me. A little more calm. A little more faith.

I am nearer to who I am trying to be, and even nearer to who I already am underneath the layers of alteration. I am nearer now than yesterday and last week and last month and last decade. That is all I’ll seek each day. That’s some of the daily bread I ask of my Father.

Some days it’s hard to feel any progress. Some days have me skidding downhill. Then some days the light down the path grows clearly brighter and bigger, and I know deep down that I’m moving toward it.

Faith, Family, Hope, Personal Reflection, Prayer

We Don’t Know

March 29, 2020 Carrie Sue Barnes

I don’t want to write this post. I don’t feel like writing it.

I thought about writing it immediately after reading my sister’s message Friday night. I thought about writing it first thing Saturday morning, when I saw other family members’ social media posts. I wrote it in my head while I made breakfast for my kids. Still, I avoided sitting down at my computer and typing it out. Instead, I scrawled out some notes I didn’t want to lose, and went for a run.

I ran and I thought.

I thought about what I’ll feel toward God if the cancer takes my sister in the end. I thought about the anger I’ll experience. Would I feel it toward Him? Toward everything? Or maybe toward nothing, a fiery arrow of anger with no target for release?

I thought about timing, wishing pointlessly that I could tell God my preferences and they’d be taken into account with weight equal to His wisdom. Timing. If the cancer has returned, if her remission is slipping away, why is it happening during a pandemic? When we can’t be with each other? When hospital stays are endured alone, with no visitors? Timing. Her second grandchild is on the way. Growing, developing, taking shape in her daughter’s womb. A gift. A rainbow baby. I have some things to say to Him about timing.

This post sat in my head the remainder of yesterday but I knew I needed to write it this morning. Sunday morning, barren of congregations gathered to worship and pray as one. This is exactly when I should write it.

The reason to write is simple: to ask all of you to pray for my sister’s healing from lymphoma. Simple, and something I’ve done several times already. Why the avoidance, then?

I didn’t want to write it because it feels too much like admitting defeat. Feelings can lie though. They’re masters at it. Asking for prayers is not admitting defeat. It’s admitting faith.

Due to 35 days straight of low grade fevers, and being bedridden for much of that time, they have tested Cheryl for any possible explanation for her symptoms. The only one reasonably left is that the cancer is relapsing. The doctors have admitted this to be the case and she will undergo new scans and biopsies to check the truth of it.

We don’t know yet if the cancer is growing again.

We don’t know yet if God has a miracle for Cheryl.

I’m going to stop getting ahead of myself and admit that just as much as I don’t know the former, I don’t know the latter either. So, I ask you to pray. I ask you to believe in your prayers. I’ll do the same.

Advent, Christmas, Faith, Family, Hope, Personal Reflection, Prayer

God Does Not Sleep

December 19, 2019December 19, 2019 Carrie Sue Barnes

Christmas doesn’t always bring a person home to a warm hearth and an idyllic pause in the strife of our days.

I typically post only on Facebook about my sister Cheryl’s battle with aggressive, advanced lymphoma. Periodically, I have asked for prayers and support from family and friends while sharing the current status of the fight. The nature of the battle now brings me here, to a broader collection of family, friends, acquaintances, and strangers.

Cheryl will spend Christmas at the Mayo Clinic hospital in Rochester, MN. Under the superb care of their doctors and nurses, she and her beloved husband Tom are awaiting the delivery of her genetically modified T Cells to be transplanted back into her ailing body. These cells, with newly gained superpowers, will try their hardest to attack the cancer cells that have spread and grown in recent months. She has literally been sustained this month by chemotherapy and steroid treatments, biding her time until the T Cells are ready.

As Christmas, that must joyous of celebrations, approaches, the only gift my faithful sister hopes for is life.

Cheryl, her husband Tom, and their children Catrina and Ryan, 12/14/19

I can’t write that without tears streaming down my face. At least once a day, I let the tears fall and plead with God to restore Cheryl to health and vitality. I release the valve for a few moments and allow the sadness, anger, and feeble hope to rise to the surface. Cheryl’s warrior spirit has taught every member of my family the astounding depth of true faith and strength that come from a divine source.

From-the-heart honesty: I don’t want any more lessons. I want healing. I want Cheryl to land on the right side of the statistics and odds. The only thing I want us to learn in the weeks to come is that miracles do happen.

Please add your prayers to mine. I rest in this: God does not sleep. He does not look away. He does not set us down from our place in His hands.

I lift up my eyes to the hills.
From whence does my help come?
My help comes from the Lord,
who made heaven and earth.

He will not let your foot be moved,
he who keeps you will not slumber.
Behold, he who keeps Israel
will neither slumber nor sleep.

The Lord is your keeper;
the Lord is your shade
on your right hand.
The sun shall not smite you by day,
nor the moon by night.

The Lord will keep you from all evil;
he will keep your life.
The Lord will keep
your going out and your coming in
from this time forth and for evermore.

Psalm 121

Cheryl, me, and my children Annabelle and Timothy, 11/24/19

Faith, Family, Hope, Personal Reflection, Prayer

Run Harder

October 12, 2019December 14, 2021 Carrie Sue Barnes

I ran this one for Cheryl. On my drive to the 10k trail race I ran this morning, I made up my mind to dedicate the run to my sister.

Let me tell you about Cheryl.

Cheryl is my oldest sister. She is a beautiful, generous, resilient rock star of a woman. She is a bottomless well of faith. Three times, Cheryl has come out victorious against cancer. Today, she is a patient at Mayo Clinic in her fourth battle. Her hardest battle. I’ve witnessed the physical misery, the sadness, and the loneliness for home as she spends more strings of days in a hospital than outside it. I’ve watched the decisions to fight, to believe, and to hope. I have seen real faith.

So, this morning, I set the purpose in my heart to run for Cheryl. I kept her in my thoughts as I waited at the starting line with 110 other people about to run 6.2 miles through the woods. As we all headed up the first hill, a steep one right after the start, I said a prayer for her. When I ran through easier stretches along meadows, enjoying the sun-soaked fall colors, I prayed for her to have easier days. While I trudged up the frequent hills on the trail, breathing hard and wanting to walk, I thought of my warrior sister fighting for her life and I said to myself, “Run harder.”

Eventually, I crossed the finish line. I felt strong, much stronger than when I ran the same race last year. My body surged with energy and I smiled as I reached the bottom of the last hill with the finish line only yards away. When I crossed that finish line though, I nearly broke down. I felt the tears pressing against my eyes, trying to escape. I felt my breathless lungs become even more constricted as a sob rose up in my throat. Then I saw a coworker standing with other finishers, drinking their water and eating their bananas, as we all do at the end of a race. I stepped over to where she was and exchanged a high-five with a smile and a compliment to her race. And I was ok. The very brief conversation made that sob dissolve and those tears retreat. I was relieved to save my crying for later, when I was alone with my thoughts.

Today, I wore the Warrior shirt designed by friends of Cheryl to support her and her family, and there were a handful of times that I glanced down at the word across my front and thought, “Run harder.” Run like Cheryl fights. Run like Cheryl believes and hopes. Run harder.

“But they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength,
they shall mount up with wings like eagles,
they shall run and not be weary,
they shall walk and not faint.”

Isaiah 40:31, RSV

Faith, Family, Hope, Jesus, Personal Reflection, Prayer

Sunbeams and Prayer Time

July 13, 2018July 13, 2018 Carrie Sue Barnes

There’s a quote from Flannery O’Connor that resonates with me as a writer: “I write to discover what I know.” Within the act of writing out my thoughts on a matter, there is often a sorting-out that occurs. Clarity arises. In writing a fiction story as well, certain ideas give me pause, making me question where the words came from within me. Writing teaches me a lot about myself.

This morning, that quote came to mind after I spent a bit of time in prayer. I thought how appropriate it’d be to say instead, “I pray to discover what I know.” Because sometimes – not all the time, but sometimes – at the close of your prayer, you are left with nothing more than what you know, and that is enough.

I had dropped the kids off at the sitter a few minutes ahead of schedule and was on my way to my office. I’d only driven a quarter mile though before I pulled over. I stepped out of my car, sat down on a curbside bench on a hill overlooking Lake Michigan, and stared at this:

I stared at the sunbeams. I stared at the clouds. I stared at the barely-there waves lapping the beach. Then, I prayed.

My family was exchanging text messages for the past hour or more as my oldest sister Cheryl prepared for her latest doctor appointment in Milwaukee. Today she’ll have a biopsy of one of the growths they’ve found, then she’ll wait approximately a week while it is analyzed to determine the exact type and stage of the cancer that has spread throughout her body.

Sitting on that bench, I thought of the specific things for which Cheryl had requested we pray. Then my mind went blank, wiped by the emotions that cluster into my throat and chest each time I pray for my sister. My own words disappeared and I resorted to what I know:

“Our Father, who art in Heaven…”

“Hail Mary, full of grace…”

“Glory be to the Father, and to the Son…”

I whispered the words, as secure and comforting as home, and I discovered what I know:

I know that God is our father. Our perfect father who has us in his care at all times even as he allows our free will and the natural world to run their course.

I know that God provides our daily bread. He places in our path the people and resources and situations to meet our souls’ and bodies’ needs.

I know that Jesus listens to the prayers of his family, and that like any Queen Mother who has the ear of her son, the King, we have Mary praying for us at Jesus’ side.

I know that God – the Holy Trinity – is worthy of all glory and praise. I know that he is unchanging, all-powerful, infinitely wise, and good without exception.

I don’t know what answer God will give to our family’s prayers, but I do know He’ll answer. Sometimes it only takes three minutes of prayer time and some stunning sunbeams to help us discover what we know.