233 The Furnace From Both Sides

When Prayers for Refinement Are Answered in the Sacred, Exhausting Grind of Care

Apr 25, 2026

Good morning and hello, friends.

For the past few weeks, you’ve been reading the installments of my book, “After the Awakening.” They’ve been publishing on a schedule I set a month ago. But life doesn’t run on schedules. The walk with God is not a pre-recorded program. It is a live, raw, and often brutal transmission from the field. Today, I need to break from the script and give you a real-time sitrep.

My mother has suffered another round of strokes. This most recent one has taken what little spirit she had left. The woman who raised me, whose eyes once held a universe of stories and love, is now effectively bed-ridden. She has lost control of her most basic bodily functions. The fight is gone. I watch, hour by hour, as her desire to keep going diminishes. It is a sacred and agonizing thing to witness a spirit grow faint.

My family copes in their own ways. I cope here, in these words, and in the silent, muscle-burning work of care.

A few months back, I shared two pieces with you: “The Lie of the Spiritual Bunker” and “The Cellar and the Flame.” In them, I wrote about a prayer. It wasn’t a polite, Sunday-school prayer. It was a plea forged in desperation and thirst. I asked God to do whatever needed to be done to purify my heart, to strengthen my faith, to let me feel a fraction of the love He has for His creation. I asked Him to walk me through the fiery furnace. To turn up the heat. To shape me as He saw fit.

Be careful what you pray for.

He answered. Almost immediately.

And now I am living in the reality of those words. The heat is not a metaphor. It is the dry, aching burn in my shoulders from lifting her. It is the searing frustration of helplessness when she cannot tell me what she needs. It is the emotional fire of watching a parent fade. The hammer and chisel are not theoretical tools. They are the daily, minute-by-minute demands that strike away my pride, my plans, my illusion of control.

The last thing I’ve wanted to do is sit and write. The desire to share evaporates in the face of sheer, physical exhaustion. What’s it like? It is being stripped of every piece of armor you didn’t even know you were wearing. Every strength you’ve relied on your entire life to weather hard times, your competence, your problem-solving, your financial cushion, your independence…gone. All that’s left is Him. And your absolute, gut-level dependence on Him.

And here is the hard, beautiful truth: having Him does not remove the pain. It does not anesthetize the suffering. It does not make changing soiled sheets any less heartbreaking. It simply gives the pain a context. It gives you a hope, not a feeling, but a stubborn, factual knowing…that He has a plan. That in the end, beyond this brutal middle, it will be all good. Romans 8:28 doesn’t promise the middle is good. It promises He works it for good. There is a chasm between those two things, and I am living in it.

So, as I type these words, my wrists are strapped for support. My muscles are smeared with ointment, burning until the Advil kicks in, a pathetic hope that it will hold my body together for the rest of the day. This is the anvil. This is the obedience. Not a grand gesture, but the grinding, sacred duty of care.

Oh, and about that fire I prayed for? It burns from both sides. From within, as every selfish impulse is incinerated. And from the world, as the practical, logistical, financial, and emotional pressures mount. It is so intense and constant that five minutes of peace feels like a two-week vacation on a sunny beach.

Someone from my church family recently said we’re all in the wilderness, but we’re at the tail end, and to remain steadfast. I wish I believed that. From where I stand, the fire only seems to get hotter with each step. The wilderness feels deeper, the night darker.

So what keeps me going? It’s not a feeling. It’s not a burst of spiritual ecstasy. It is the trio my former life would have dismissed as intangible: hope, trust, and faith. These things can’t be graphed on a spreadsheet. They can’t be measured in a bank account. But right now, they are as real to me as the chair I’m sitting in. They are the only currency that works in this economy. They are all there is.

This is the furnace from both sides. It is the answer to a prayer I was brave enough, or foolish enough to pray. “Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting!” (Psalm 139:23-24 ESV). He is doing just that. The trying is not gentle. The leading is through the valley of the shadow.

I do not know how many more words I will have to share in the coming weeks. The last installment of the book is scheduled. Beyond that, I make no promises. There is a time for all things under heaven, and this is a time for silence, for service, for receiving the blows of the Refiner’s hammer.

I trust you’ll understand. For those of you walking your own narrow path, your own version of this furnace, know this: you are not alone. The Refiner is faithful. He does not waste the heat. He is not creating a museum piece to be admired. He is forging a weapon, on the anvil of obedience, for a war we cannot yet see. And the anvil is never in the cellar.

It is right here, in the sickroom, in the exhaustion, in the silent prayer screamed into a pillow at 3 AM. This is where the metal is tempered. This is where the form is found.

That is all, and thank you for reading.