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Endure

The past 72 hours or so in my household have been quite hectic. Sunday started out with my wife waking up sick. She was still a trooper however and helped me out as much as she could. Between her naps she assisted in wrangling our two young ones. As the day progressed, I started not feeling well and got exhausted by the time the kids went to bed.
Monday morning came and I woke up sick with the same thing my wife had. My wife, stressed, still recuperating, and tired, got the kids ready and off to daycare while I stayed home to rest. Just when I thought, “Okay, this is good. My wife can get things done at work like she needs to while I sleep and get better before the night,” my wife got a phone call. It appeared that my son had a fever and was coughing a lot.
So, like the great mom she is, she picked him up and took him to the doctor. After two hours we found that nothing was wrong but perhaps teething and a slight cold. Nevertheless, he stayed home the rest of the day with us. Neither of us rested much.
That night, both my son and daughter got up multiple times with coughing fits and bad dreams. My wife sacrificed sleep so I could try and recuperate fully and took care of the kids every time they woke. She is amazing! In my defense, I did get up once with my son. But she certainly did more.
Although we both went to work on Tuesday, we were like zombies at times. Our bodies were on auto-pilot while our brains were in Neverland. I wish I could say that Tuesday night was better, but unfortunately it was a lot of the same except it was both of us getting up multiple times. A one-year-old's cough and crying with the added screams of a three-year-old made for an eventful night. When it was all said and done, we may have gotten four hours of sleep. Maybe.
I do not rattle this story off to gain sympathy from anyone. Trust me; I know there are others out there who have it far worse than myself. I tell you this to share something that God has revealed to me this morning. It’s not something that most people like to hear either. When we are in the midst of stress and pain, we want to hear phrases like, “It’s okay, it’ll get better,” or “I’ll be praying for you and your family,” or even “God will see you through this.”
It is only one word that God shared with me this morning as I prayed to Him; Endure. As upset as I wanted to be that God didn't fix my current situation, I couldn't help myself but to feel at peace with His response.
Sometimes we must endure our current situation and grow from our experiences. Through these situations God will equip us for a future battle or make us stronger in character. Instead of praying for God to fix the situation, perhaps we need to pray for God to give us the STRENGTH and ENERGY and perhaps PATIENCE to endure.

“More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope,” Romans 5:3-4.

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