He’s our son. I love him enough to give up my own life for him. If I could transplant my heart into his own chest, I would. God knows I’ve tried to figure out a way to do that and have wondered aloud to the Lord if it would even help. Maybe my own heart is in need of a transplant as well.
It is as if his heart is charred, blackened, smoldering, a darkened shadow of what it once was, dying a slow spiritual death. I wonder does God ever do a spiritual transplant of one’s heart?
The Lord declares … “Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a spirit within you, and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will be careful to observe My ordinances.” (Ezekiel 36:26-27)
I’ve not experienced walking alongside someone who has had their heart physically transplanted, but I have stood at the bedside of a child who only hours before had their chest opened and heart stopped while a surgeon and his skilled team work to reroute, rewire, and restart a physically defective heart. It is scary. It is physically debilitating. It is messed up. It is broken. And often necessary for life to continue.
So I ask myself again, Lord can’t you transplant our son’s spiritually defective heart? Why don’t You act, O Lord? Why don’t You reach in and stop his heart and FIX it? Then, You, O Lord, can restart it restored and returned to the way it once was, to the way You always intended it to be. I KNOW You can, O Lord. And I continue to ask this and pray a prayer something like this over and over, but all I hear is silence and the beating of my own heart.
This son of ours, who has left my own heart shattered, tattered and with a hole that seems to continually tear larger and larger, is a teenager. He’s old enough to drive. He’s a boy in a man’s body. He’s in high school. But this journey we’ve been on with him—really it is a battle—it’s been years of trench living and gut-wrenching nights of crying out to the One True God who made him in my womb all those years ago.
I liken this battle to a tug-of-war game of epic proportions. Rather than a flag tied to the middle of the rope, our son is dangling from it. I see my husband ahead of me, but I’m closely behind him and so many friends and family members are tugging just behind me, all of us pleading in prayer to the One True God on our son’s behalf. But as I stare across the deep chasm, I see the enemy—satan himself—and his legions of demons tugging mightily right back. But I have left out one crucial fact and that is the Person in front of my husband, leading the battle. It is the Lord Himself who fights for our son. The same God who fought for His people, Israel, fights on behalf of our son.
The Lord your God who goes before you will himself fight for you, just as He did for you in Egypt before your eyes … ” (Deuteronomy 1:30)
You shall not fear them, for it is the Lord your God who fights for you.” (Deuteronomy 3:22)
For the Lord your God is he who goes with you to fight for you against your enemies, to give you the victory.” (Deuteronomy 20:4)
I look around and realize we’re not alone. We are surrounded by earthly comrades in this battle, but we are also surrounded by God and His angels who fight for us, for our son. The battle is ensuing but we know Who wins. The crux is that we don’t know what that victory looks like, because our Lord doesn’t work in only earthly space and time. He also doesn’t work only in earthly paths to victory because He indwells eternity.
I believe more than anything that this is where true faith lies. Not in the knowing that victory will come, but in knowing and believing and trusting that true victory will come in the way the Lord intends and in a way where He gets the most glory. Our role is only to keep trusting and telling others our ONLY HOPE is in Him, the One True God.
If this victory could be secured through money, therapy, therapeutic residential programs, wilderness residential camps, sleepless nights, hospitalizations, mental health medications, broken dreams, absolute and complete surrender to anything that we once held dear for our son’s future … then we’d have already obtained the victory. But that is not how this journey has taken shape. Instead, my husband and I have clawed, prayed, crawled, cried out, heaved buckets of tears to the foot of the cross, and laid our hearts open bare to the Lord for our own renewal and reconstruction. For years, we have also done the aforementioned at one time or another—seeking nearly every earthly avenue of hope we have stumbled upon or came to through careful research and countless prayers and consultations with professionals and spiritual advisors.
God knows our desires. Our desperate cries. Our dreams long since laid down and surrendered. He knows our desire for restoration. For rebirth in the spring after a long hard winter. He knows we are malleable and moldable in His hands, because He knows the depths through which our family has already walked. I’m afraid He is going to ask too much of us again in the future, but then I’m reminded this isn’t about us or even our son. It is about Him and His plans and His glory.