When God's answers are unconventional

I started a post a few months ago and entitled it "What is Healing?" It was going to be about how/what healing looks like for us but more specifically for my brother. It was going to talk about how healing might look like being able to breath without assistance, or after a bad accident, being able to push yourself in a wheelchair after being bed ridden for so long. I didn't get a chance to post it; mostly because I never finished writing it and then myb brother died.

I really, honestly believed that God would've healed my brother. In my head, healing was him getting up out of that hospital bed, getting off that ventilator and walking and talking and breathing all on his own. In my head, he would be alright. Instead he died. About a week after his death we buried him but during that time God took me back to what healing was and I had to change my view of healing. I had to adopt the view that my brother was healed. Maybe not in the way that I wanted or in the way that I had hoped but he was healed. He was not in pain, he wasn't suffering anymore...and that 's ultimately what I was praying for.

Sometimes we pray and we ask God for things. We pray - have your way but really what we mean is answer my prayer, my way. We pray for a job and in our head we have something with a corner office but instead the opportunity comes around to work with a group of homeless kids at a shelter but we don't want that job because that's not what we prayed for. Or we pray for a car and we get a chance to buy a 1990 Corolla but we really wanted something newer.

Don't get me wrong, God does answer prayers. At times when we are so specific in things He would give us that thing but most times, God's answers are unconventional and let's be honest, not really what we were hoping for. However, they are never wrong!

Through my brother's death, I am learning about God's goodness, God's promises and God's answers. What we perceive as wrong or inconvenient (at that moment) God is seeing the whole picture and just waiting for us to get to the place, that moment that He saw, and realize... ohhhh this is why You gave me this instead of that.

If I could say this - be blessed. Whatever God gives you, albeit unconventional, know that there is a purpose. My brother's healing my way may have meant more years in pain or a very, very long drawn out process to death. Healing God's way - he's fine. He's in the arms of Jesus.  The Bible says that God knows what we need even before we ask so we must trust that God's answers God's way will always be the best for us. So trust God. We may not see it now - in the pain, in the hurt, in the confusion - but when we do, we will see that God does answer our prayers :)