Answered Prayers Aren't Always What we Expect

I posted a Verse of The Day below this post. After publishing the post, I could not get the verse or my thoughts on the verse out of my mind. I decided that I needed to expand on my thoughts.

Answered Prayers

"Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you." Matthew 7:7

This verse brought prayer to the forefront of my mind. My life is so very blessed by the Lord. He has given me so much and has answered all of my prayers. I know the Lord will provide for me, when it is His will that I truly seek.

When I was pregnant with my son, I prayed to our Father every day that He would give me a happy and healthy child. A simple request, yes, but it was my heart’s desire. The Lord answered my prayer and today my son is both happy and healthy. There is not a day that goes by that I don’t thank the Lord for that answered prayer.

Are answered prayers always this easy? Of course not. Sometimes the Lord answers our prayers in ways that we certainly do not expect. Sometimes the answer to a prayer is so difficult that you can’t imagine why it is happening to you. At the beginning of the relationship with my husband, I prayed that the Lord would make our relationship work and make it strong. Less than one year into our relationship, my then boyfriend, an outwardly healthy 26 year old man, was diagnosed with stage 4 malignant melanoma. The cancer had spread to his lymph nodes. The cancer was going to require one year of chemotherapy type treatments. A couple of months into his treatments, my boyfriend proposed to me. My answer was an immediate yes. It never occurred to me that I should consider anything other than yes. Why would cancer effect my decision?

A very dear friend once told me, “The Lord will never give you more than you can handle.” I made it my mission to live this message and make my fiancé live it as well. As a result, I went on to be the typical “bride to be.” My focus was on the having the perfect wedding (perfect dress, perfect flowers, perfect food, perfect cake, perfect music). Three weeks prior to our wedding day, my fiancé started having headaches, blurred vision and dizzy spells. His oncologist sent him for a brain scan to rule out a brain tumor. “WHAT? No, that’s not possible!,” were my reactions. What a wake up call! Somehow, I managed to forget how serious his condition really was. We went to the brain scan together, then waited for the results from his normally deadpan doctor together. As soon as his doctor entered the room, a huge smile spread across his face. It was then, that we knew there was no brain tumor. It was the treatments that were causing his symptoms.

It was at that moment, that I realized what the Lord was doing in our relationship. He was bringing us together on a level that so many, at our young age and stage in our relationship, never get to experience. At that point, I realized that the only thing that mattered was being married to that man. The perfect wedding no longer mattered to me. I gained the prospective I needed.

Have you ever heard the saying, “Be careful what you pray for?” Answered prayers aren’t always what we expect them to be. Sometimes they are straight and to the point. Other times, they are trials in our lives. Should these trials in our lives, keep us from asking?