Faith in the middle of healing, family tension, and the mixed bag life hands us.
Sometimes life isn’t all bad, but it isn’t all good either.
You’re thankful, but tired. Blessed, but stressed. Healing, but still sore. Trusting God, but still asking questions. Trying to lead your family, but still learning how to surrender.
That’s real faith.
Not polished faith. Not Sunday-only faith. Not the kind of faith that only sounds good when everything is calm and easy.
I’m talking about faith in the middle of the mixed bag.
That’s exactly where I’ve been.
Last week was one of those weeks where everything seemed to arrive at once. I was at work during the busiest part of my shift when the messages started coming in. Family tension. Weight I didn’t go looking for. A situation I didn’t ask to be pulled into, but somehow found sitting right in the middle of my chest anyway.
And at the end of it all came a text about my heart procedure, saying they hoped it went well and that they were praying for me.
I’ll be honest. In that moment, it hurt.
Not because prayer isn’t real. Not because I don’t believe in it. I do. Prayer matters. Prayer changes things. Prayer reaches places our hands never could.
But because of the timing, and because of everything that came before it, those words didn’t land the way prayer should land.
Maybe it was sincere. I hope it was. But standing there in the middle of my shift, with everything hitting at once, it felt heavy. It felt confusing. It felt like one more thing added to a week that was already asking a lot from me.
And two days later, I was lying in a hospital getting a heart procedure done.
Life doesn’t hit pause just because you need it to.
Before I Knew I Needed It
But here’s what I want to tell you about.
Before any of that happened, before the procedure, before the messages, before the week turned into what it turned into, God was already moving.
My wife has a customer she sees regularly. Someone I’ve never met. I don’t know her name. I probably never will. But at some point before all of this came to a head, this woman handed my wife a small cross made out of olive wood.
Just a little fidget cross. Something you hold in your hand.
And she asked my wife one simple question:
What can I pray about for you?
My wife’s answer was simple, too.
She asked her to pray for me during my heart procedure.
And she did.
A stranger. Someone who has never met me, never sat across from me, never heard my whole story. She prayed for me anyway.
And she sent my wife into the world carrying a little piece of olive wood as a reminder that God works through people, whether we see it coming or not.
When my wife gave me that cross, I put it on my desk. It sat there every day leading up to the procedure. Then, the morning I went in, I picked it up.
And I haven’t put it down since.
I carry it with me everywhere now.
That small cross means more to me than I can fully explain. Not because the wood itself is magic. Not because the object has power by itself. But because of what it represents.
It represents prayer.
It represents obedience.
It represents a stranger listening to God and asking one small question that carried more weight than she probably realized.
That was not a coincidence.
That’s God setting something up before I even knew I would need it.
That’s Him saying, “I see what’s coming. I already sent something ahead for you.”
God Was in the Room
He was in the hospital.
He was in the week that tried to break me before I even got there.
He was in the stranger who handed my wife something small and asked how she could pray.
And then Saturday came.
Two days after the procedure, still recovering, my house was full of grandchildren.
Playing. Laughing. Getting along. No arguing. No tension. Just kids being kids, and a room so full of love and peace it almost didn’t feel real.
I wasn’t loud about it. I didn’t make a big speech. I just leaned over to my wife, quiet enough that only she could hear me, and said:
Would you just look at this!
That was it.
That was all I had.
Because some moments don’t need a speech. They just need someone to witness them with you.
At one point, I asked her where the pause button was, because I didn’t want that night to end.
I got individual time with each of them. Not a lot, but enough. And honestly, it was more than enough.
God was pouring grace all over that living room, and I could feel every drop of it.
The only thing missing was my youngest granddaughter. And I felt that absence. I still do. That would have made the night complete.
But even in that, I felt something deeper rising in me.
Not anger.
Not bitterness.
Not control.
Conviction.
With God front and center, with Him in the lead, with His wisdom and guidance, I will not willingly stand by and watch this family be divided. Not as long as I still breathe air.
That is not anger talking.
That is a husband, father, and grandfather who just spent a week facing his own mortality, holding a little olive wood cross from a stranger who prayed for him, then watching his grandchildren fill his living room with laughter two days after a heart procedure.
That is a man realizing all over again what actually matters.
This family matters.
Every single person in it.
Including the ones who aren’t in the room yet.
God Was Preparing Me for This
I’ve been thinking about something lately.
I don’t think any of this caught God off guard.
I think He has been preparing me for this for a long time. Longer than I realized.
I grew up watching my father. I paid attention to how he led. I watched other families too, how they handled things, where they went wrong, where they held together, and where they started to crack.
Even in my own family, I saw division happen. I saw how it started. I saw how it spread. I saw what it cost the people caught in the middle.
I didn’t know at the time that God was filing all of that away in me.
But I believe He was.
Quietly.
Patiently.
Through other people’s stories and through my own hard lessons.
And I’ve had plenty of those.
I’ve done things in my life, good and bad. I’ve handled some situations the wrong way. I’ve responded with pride when I should have responded with humility. I’ve spoken when I should have listened. I’ve held on when I should have surrendered.
I carry some of that.
I think about it more than people know.
Some people from those seasons are no longer here. Not because of me, but they’re gone. And they never got to see what God has done in my life. They never got to see what I’ve learned. They never got to see the man that grace is shaping me into.
That sits with me.
It always will.
But I also believe God uses all of it.
The watching.
The mistakes.
The losses.
The lessons that came the hard way.
He doesn’t waste any of it.
He takes every season you have lived through, the good, the bad, the painful, the confusing, and He shapes you into someone who can handle what is coming next.
I believe that is what He has been doing with me.
This isn’t just a hard season. This is a test.
And I believe God already knew it was headed my way.
He has been showing me, through my father, through other families, through my own failures, how to handle this the right way.
That verse has been sitting heavily with me lately, because family tension will test all three. It will test whether we really want peace, or whether we only want to be right.
Not with pride.
Not with revenge.
Not with control.
With love.
With prayer.
With truth.
With humility.
With God in the lead.
Every family has someone who helps hold the bond together. Someone who notices when things start drifting. Someone who feels the cracks before everyone else sees them.
I’m not standing here declaring myself the hero of anything. That would be foolish, and I have already learned what pride can do.
But if God has placed even part of that responsibility in my hands, I will not take it lightly.
Because here’s what I keep thinking about.
When I’m gone, and none of us know when that day will come, this past week reminded me of that clearly. I don’t want to leave behind a divided family.
I don’t want my wife carrying that.
I don’t want my grandchildren growing up in the tension of it.
I don’t want the people I love most feeling the weight of something that could have been healed while I was still here to help heal it.
I want to leave behind something stronger than I found it.
That’s the assignment.
That’s what I believe God has been preparing me for all along.
And the ones I am most focused on right now, the ones I will protect with everything in me, are my wife and my grandchildren.
I don’t want them buried under hurt they didn’t create.
I don’t want them carrying division that should have been handled by the adults in the room.
They deserve better than that.
And as long as God gives me breath, I am going to fight for that with every tool He has placed in my hands.
Love.
Prayer.
Honesty.
Humility.
Forgiveness.
And the wisdom of every lesson, good, bad, and painful, that God has been quietly storing up in me my whole life for exactly this moment.
You Can Be Thankful and Tired at the Same Time
You can be grateful for healing and still feel the weight of everything pressing in around you.
You can trust God and still not understand why the hard things have to land the way they do.
You can carry faith and carry questions in the same hand.
That doesn’t make you weak.
That makes you human.
And God is not asking you to pretend otherwise.
“Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.”
He didn’t say come to Me once you’ve figured it all out.
He didn’t say come to Me when the family tension is resolved, the finances are stable, the health scare is over, and the stress has finally settled down.
He said come to Me, weary.
Come carrying the weight.
Come in the middle of the mess.
That’s the invitation.
“My grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness.”
I’m still recovering.
Still sorting through some things.
Still in the middle of a season that doesn’t have a clean ending yet.
But I have a little olive wood cross in my pocket from a woman I’ve never met who prayed for me anyway.
And somehow, that is enough to keep going.
Not because life suddenly became easy.
Not because every problem has been solved.
Not because every relationship is healed and every question is answered.
But because God reminded me that He was already there.
Before the procedure.
Before the tension.
Before the worry.
Before the room full of grandchildren.
Before I even knew what the week was going to demand from me.
He had already sent something ahead.
So whatever you are carrying right now, hold on.
Hold on to whatever small reminder God has placed in your hand.
A cross.
A prayer.
A person.
A moment of peace.
A child’s laugh.
A quiet word from your spouse.
A verse that keeps coming back when you need it most.
Don’t ignore those things.
That may be God reminding you that He has not forgotten you.
Keep going.
Keep trusting.
Keep praying.
Keep loving your family.
Keep choosing peace where the world wants division.
Keep letting God lead, even when your flesh wants to grab the wheel and prove a point.
Because real faith is not always loud.
Sometimes real faith is a tired man holding a little wooden cross, watching his grandchildren laugh, and deciding that love, grace, and God’s wisdom will have the final word in his home.
That’s faith in the middle of the mixed bag.
A Prayer
Father,
I come to You on behalf of everyone reading this who is in a season they do not fully understand.
The ones who are tired but still showing up.
The ones carrying things they did not ask to carry.
The ones who are grateful and worn out at the same time.
Meet them right where they are.
Remind them that you do not require polished faith. You welcome an open hand and a surrendered heart.
Send something ahead of them the way You sent that little cross ahead of me. Let them recognize it when it arrives.
Protect every family represented in this prayer.
Every marriage.
Every child.
Every grandchild.
Bring back the ones who are missing from the room.
Heal what pride, hurt, distance, and misunderstanding have damaged.
Restore what the enemy has tried to divide.
Teach us to lead with love, speak with wisdom, forgive with humility, and stand firm without becoming hard.
Give us peace that does not depend on perfect circumstances.
Give us strength that does not come from pride.
Give us grace for the people we love, even when the road is difficult.
And give us rest, real rest, in the middle of whatever mixed bag this season has handed us.
In Jesus’ name,
Amen.