Dear friend,
The LORD will sustain him on his sickbed, and restore him from his bed of illness.
There is a verse in the Psalms that says the Lord sustains a person on their sickbed, and in their illness restores them to health, though the second half of that promise has always struck me as less settled than it first appears. I have sat with people whose illness did not resolve the way that line seems to guarantee, and I do not think the psalm is lying to them. I think it is describing something closer to being upheld than being fixed. Sustained is the word that stays with me. Not cured on schedule, not spared the hard nights, but held through them, which is a smaller promise and somehow a sturdier one. My husband spent stretches of 2018 in and out of appointments, and what I remember is not relief but a kind of company in the waiting, someone still present when the news stayed complicated. I do not know what your days look like right now, whether they are full of tests or the strange quiet after them, but I wonder whether sustained is a word that has any room in it for what you are carrying. What would it mean for you to be upheld today rather than fixed?
A prayer
God, You know the particular weight of this illness and the fatigue of managing it day after day. Sustain her on the hard mornings, steady her when the answers are slow, and stay close in the waiting. Amen.