You Pray for Someone and Horrible Things Happen by Zoe M. McCarthy

My friend has been dealing with an ailment that I can only imagine how difficult it is. Her disorder adversely affects her life minute by minute. I told her I would pray for her, and I have. Daily and fervently.

Zoe M. McCarthy

No doctor of any kind could pinpoint her problem. Physicians would have her try various regimens, but nothing worked. Or they misdiagnosed the problem, and her health got worse. I prayed harder. My hope that God would heal her remained high, but I worried her faith would wane.

Then she was diagnosed with a condition that was promising, and she had a good couple of weeks. I was praising God.

In her next email, she said she’d contracted an ailment that exacerbated her illness and took three miserable weeks to heal from. I had to tamp down over and over my “Why God?” thoughts. I asked God whether He was worried, as I was, that she’d give up Him. My husband and I prayed for her healing.

The next day she sent me a quick email that she was in the hospital with an attack from a third illness! I was shocked. And disappointed. I didn’t know what was going on. I told God I knew He loved her, and I knew He was working in her, but was she able to hold on to this? I asked God to bind Satan.

In a Bible study, we sang Horatio Spafford’s “It Is Well With My Soul.” My friend popped into my mind in the way that God often speaks to me. “When sorrows like sea billows roll; Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say, It is well, it is well with my soul.”

I sent my friend Spafford’s hymn and the story of his losing an investment, his son to Scarlet fever, and his four daughters in a sinking ship.

In her next email, she said that in the end the hospital stay was a good thing. She found the right doctor who was ordering tests that should have been done long ago. They’d already ruled out scary diseases. She told me she felt blessed and was ready to handle whatever ailment she had to deal with.

What an example for me!

I was so humbled. God knows what He’s doing with people’s faith through their trials. He knows their strengths. He’s taught me much about trusting others’ faith and God’s work in them. I don’t know if the tests and the right doctor will be able to treat my friend’s ailment successfully, but I’m simply called to pray and care. I know she’s in God’s hands and is willing to trust the Lord.

When have you recognized blessings among your trials?

Sometimes when you pray hard for someone else, God is working a lesson in you. Click to Tweet.

About the Author

Zoe M. McCarthy believes that opposites distract. Thus, she spins Christian contemporary romances entangling extreme opposites. Her tagline is Distraction to Attraction, Magnetic Romances Between Opposites. Her first novel is Calculated Risk. She has two more contemporary romances and a nonfiction book to help writers ready their manuscripts coming out soon. She’s a member of American Christian Fiction Writers. She enjoys leading workshops on the craft of writing; speaking about her faith; planning fun events for her 5 grandchildren; and exploring the Blue Ridge Mountains, where she lives with her husband, John.
Learn more about Zoe M. McCarthy at her website: http://zoemmccarthy.com

Calculated Risk

What happens when an analytical numbers man meets a mercurial marketing Rep? Romance is a calculated risk…

Calculated Risk
by Zoe M. McCarthy

Jilted by the latest of her father’s choices of “real men,” Cisney Baldwin rashly accepts an invitation to spend Thanksgiving weekend with a sympathetic colleague and his family. Nick LeCrone is a man too much her opposite to interest her and too mild-mannered to make her overbearing father’s “list.” Now, Cisney fears Nick wants to take advantage of her vulnerable state over the holiday. Boy, is she wrong.

Nick wants little to do with Cisney. She drives him crazy with all her sticky notes and quirks. He extended an invitation because he felt sorry for her. Now he’s stuck, and to make matters worse, his family thinks she’s his perfect match. He’ll do what he can to keep his distance, but there’s just one problem—he’s starting to believe Cisney’s magnetism is stronger than he can resist.

Purchase links for Calculated Risk: http://zoemmccarthy.com/books

Does Your Life Feel Like Boot Camp? by Zoe M. McCarthy

I read The Red Platoon by Clinton Romesha. This true story of an American military camp in Afghanistan under a horrendous, well-coordinated attack is not for the squeamish on any front. But I’m glad I read it. The soldiers’ gruesome battle, which lasted one long day, lost seven American soldiers and wounded many others. Their day came across to me as a metaphor in four ways for our Christian walk.

Zoe M. McCarthy

1. Successfully bearing harsh treatment in boot camp and receiving additional training and experience are paramount to survival.

Battle of Kamdesh

The surrounded American soldiers, camp doctors, chain of leaders inside and outside the camp, and air personnel (who eventually were able to come to the camp’s aid in helicopters and advanced technical airplanes), were trained physically, technically, and strategically. And many had prior combat experience.

Mistakes happened, but the experienced men were able to function and act under extreme stress because they knew what to do and how to do it. Their preparedness foiled the likely massacre.

In contrast, the Afghan National Army soldiers assigned to the American camp lacked training. Their response to hundreds of Taliban raining down all manner of fire on the camp was to leave their posts and hide.

Christian Walk

When we’re trained in God’s Word and keep our faith through our trials, we become stronger and gain the knowledge and experience to face whatever befalls us and to help others through their hardships. We know what to do and how to do it.

2. When soldiers are experienced, equipped, and prepared for the worst of situations, courage comes naturally.

Battle of Kamdesh

Nothing went smoothly with 300 Taliban shooting from higher ground at 85 American and 35 Afghan National Army soldiers. But repeatedly, the experienced American soldiers put themselves in harm's way, individually or in improvised teams to save the camp. Some begged their leaders to go under fire to try a strategy to rescue others. When called, the experienced soldiers, without question, performed their duties. I was awed by their courage.

Christian Walk

When we’re prayed up, well versed in God’s word, trust God in every circumstance, and obey His command not to be afraid or worry, we can possess unlimited courage when we’re called. Even if our hearts are beating like crazy.

3. When soldiers bond, they love and risk their lives for each other.

Battle of Kamdesh

Much of the time, what was foremost in the experienced soldiers’ minds was to get to a truck or building where their buddies were trapped and out of ammunition. Even for their dead, they risked their lives to keep the Taliban from taking their bodies to use in TV propaganda.

Christian Walk

Our unity with our brothers and sisters in Christ, as branches on Christ’s vine, enables us to love each other in our hearts and with actions. When we pray for and support each other, the Body of Christ is strong. We are also able to love and forgive others and our enemies.

4. When soldiers obey their commanding officers and perform with excellence for their country, they are honored for their faithfulness.

Battle of Kamdesh

Faithful American, Staff Sergeant Clinton Romesha sometimes had to force himself to see the wisdom of his commanding officer’s decisions, but he obeyed with respect. He was awarded the Medal of Honor for his leadership and actions during the Battle of Kamdesh. This is the USA’s highest and most prestigious military decoration.

Christian Walk

We know Christ’s leading is best, and when we obey, we are faithfully about our Father’s work. God awards us with heaven’s highest honor—our salvation.

When were you prepared to do what God called you to do?

Training in God’s Word and boot-camp trials prepare us for whatever may befall us. Click to Tweet.

Zoe M. McCarthy believes the little known fact that opposites distract. Thus, she spins Christian contemporary romances entangling extreme opposites. Her tagline is: Distraction to Attraction, Magnetic Romances Between Opposites. Her first novel is Calculated Risk. She has two more contemporary romances and a nonfiction book to help writers ready their manuscripts coming out soon. She’s a member of American Christian Fiction Writers. She enjoys leading workshops on the craft of writing; speaking about her faith; planning fun events for her 5 grandchildren; and exploring the Blue Ridge Mountains, where she lives with her husband, John. 

Calculated Risk
by Zoe M. McCarthy

Learn more about Zoe M. McCarthy at her website: http://zoemmccarthy.com

Calculated Risk

What happens when an analytical numbers man meets a mercurial marketing Rep? Romance is a calculated risk…

Jilted by the latest of her father’s choices of “real men,” Cisney Baldwin rashly accepts an invitation to spend Thanksgiving weekend with a sympathetic colleague and his family. Nick LeCrone is a man too much her opposite to interest her and too mild-mannered to make her overbearing father’s “list.” Now, Cisney fears Nick wants to take advantage of her vulnerable state over the holiday. Boy, is she wrong.

Nick wants little to do with Cisney. She drives him crazy with all her sticky notes and quirks. He extended an invitation because he felt sorry for her. Now he’s stuck, and to make matters worse, his family thinks she’s his perfect match. He’ll do what he can to keep his distance, but there’s just one problem—he’s starting to believe Cisney’s magnetism is stronger than he can resist.

Purchase links for Calculated Risk: http://zoemmccarthy.com/books

Is Your Life Like a One-Ingredient Cake? by Zoe M. McCarthy

Zoe M. McCarthy

Do you feel like flour or baking powder—sifted?
Do you taste like vanilla or cocoa–bitter?
Do you act like pure sugar—sickly sweet?
Do you come across like oil—too slick?
Do you bear up like salt—preserved?
Do you feel like udder milk—squeezed?
Do you feel like an egg—born yesterday?

When my sister gives her testimony, she brings a story basket with all the above ingredients. She quotes Romans 8:28. And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. Then based on Randy Alcorn’s article “There Is No Pointless Suffering,” she says:

“Almost everything that goes into a cake tastes terrible. But a delicious metamorphosis takes place when these ingredients are skillfully measured and mixed then baked at the perfect temperature. The final product is good!

“Our trials and apparent tragedies taste bitter to us. However, no translation of Romans 8:28 says ‘each thing by itself is good,’ but ‘all things work together for good,’ and not on their own, but under God’s sovereign hand. Every experience God gives us is the perfect preparation for the future only He can see.”

Then my sister relates how God orchestrated her life from abuse to the other side where God gave her a new name. From victim to survivor.

Ultimately, the big question for my sister was Jesus’ question to the invalid of 38 years that He approached beside the pool at Bethesda, “Do you want to get well?” (NIV) Or, “Wilt thou be made whole?” (KJV)

Was my sister’s journey under God’s orchestration easy? No.

At three and a half, she was abused. She felt abandoned, she screamed inside, and she “exploded.” Then she felt God say, “You’ll always have a Father in heaven.”

Undergoing the abuse by a different perpetrator much of her young life, she stuffed the memories. In her twenties, she slogged through a period of depression.

Later, she began to realize the life she had lived was not the life she had believed it to be. “Denial. Self-brainwashing.”

She was in therapy for ten years. The betrayal of her perpetrator was the hardest to deal with. “One minute I’d want to explode and shatter every piece of glass to communicate what I felt, and the next I’d want to implode until there was not one cell left of me.”

God never let go of her, even when she didn’t like Him, obeyed Him only because He was more powerful than she was, and struggled to study the Bible when she didn’t want to because it brought horrifying flashbacks. God stayed with her. He spoke to her in dreams and once appeared in a powerful show of light when she was awake.

Besides the abuse, my sister had three miscarriages, and her youngest daughter is a special-needs child. In spite of her trials, she has enjoyed much success in her life, before and after therapy. She has also served in a long-term children’s ministry and ministered to other women.

My sister ends her testimony, relating her ability to forgive and making these statements:

“God didn’t just make the best of a bad situation. Rather, he intended all along to use evil for ultimate good.”

“God has a plan, the ability to carry it out, and the loving kindness to do it not only for His glory but our good.”

If you are feeling like a one-ingredient cake, listen to Jesus’ question to you. “Do you want to get well?” If yes, let Him make you whole.

Is Your Life Like a One-Ingredient Cake? Click to Tweet.

About the Author

Zoe M. McCarthy believes the little-known fact that opposites distract. Thus, she spins Christian contemporary romances entangling extreme opposites. Her tagline is: Distraction to Attraction, Magnetic Romances Between Opposites. Her first novel is Calculated Risk. She has two more contemporary romances and a nonfiction book to help writers ready their manuscripts coming out soon. She’s a member of American Christian Fiction Writers. She enjoys leading workshops on the craft of writing; speaking about her faith; planning fun events for her 5 grandchildren; and exploring the Blue Ridge Mountains, where she lives with her husband, John.
Learn more about Zoe M. McCarthy at her website: http://zoemmccarthy.com

Calculated Risk

What happens when an analytical numbers man meets a mercurial marketing Rep? Romance is a calculated risk…

Jilted by the latest of her father’s choices of “real men,” Cisney Baldwin rashly accepts an invitation to spend Thanksgiving weekend with a sympathetic colleague and his family. Nick LeCrone is a man too much her opposite to interest her and too mild-mannered to make her overbearing father’s “list.” Now, Cisney fears Nick wants to take advantage of her vulnerable state over the holiday. Boy, is she wrong.

Nick wants little to do with Cisney. She drives him crazy with all her sticky notes and quirks. He extended an invitation because he felt sorry for her. Now he’s stuck, and to make matters worse, his family thinks she’s his perfect match. He’ll do what he can to keep his distance, but there’s just one problem—he’s starting to believe Cisney’s magnetism is stronger than he can resist.

Purchase links for Calculated Risk: http://zoemmccarthy.com/books