On December 31, 2000, my husband, pastor, and best friend, Dr. Bill Trapp, went to be with Jesus. So many believers ‘took on’ our cause and prayed for us so faithfully during his 3 ½ year battle with Lou Gehrig's Disease. It was a battle Bill fought valiantly, with such grace and peace and sweetness of spirit, even in the final days when he suffered so. I never heard him complain. The grace he exhibited was released to him through the prayers of so many. Our family was the recipient of that divinely released grace too. It was like an invisible cushion that held us and sustained us, as so many prayer warriors stormed heaven on our behalf.

The grace was real and it was there, no figment of our imaginations or the result of ‘positive thinking.’ No amount of ‘optimism’ can carry you through such deep waters with your faith intact. No ‘determination’ can give you the strength and even joy to sing praises as your loved one is breathing his last breaths. Only God’s glorious grace, divinely imparted in the hour of need, can do that. I praise Him for His sustaining grace and peace, even in the midst of life’s darkest trials.

We prayed for healing and believed God for a mighty miracle even to the very end. I think no one was more surprised than Bill Trapp when he ‘stepped over’ into glory. He was expecting a miracle, as we all were. Yes, he was probably a bit surprised…but NOT a bit disappointed!

Was our faith in vain? Were we foolish to ask for such an outrageous thing?

No, a thousand times no!

Faith always pleases God. Indeed, it is the main thing He is looking for when He peers into our hearts. I would rather DIE believing God than live every day with no expectation at all. Indeed, how many saints listed in Hebrews Hall of Faith actually died without receiving, on this earth, what was promised? "These were all commended for their faith; yet none of them received what had been promised." (Heb. 11:39) They died without receiving!

The Lord imparted faith to us to believe Him for a great miracle. We stood. We claimed. We did not waver. There were countless prayer meetings. Saints would come and lay on the grass outside his window when he was having a particularly bad day. Cars would be parked in front of our home at all hours, with private prayer meetings going on inside. We kept our basement door open for ‘random pray-ers’ who wanted to come in, near him, and pray. Forty to seventy people marched around our home in a prayer walk, night after night, in sub-freezing temperatures. He was anointed with oil as the elders laid hands on him. It could not be said of us, as it was said of the inhabitants of some Galilean cities, "He could not do many mighty works there because of their unbelief."

So, why did the Father lead us to faith, only to ‘disappoint’ us in the end?

My firm conviction is that He was about much more than one man’s physical healing. WE were focused on "event"…. He was focused on "process", the process of conforming us to the image of Christ, even through suffering. We were focused on earthly change; He was focused on eternal change in us. We were a bit like His disciples who could not see a Cross before there could be a Throne. We think the goal of faith is to ‘get’ something, when many times His goal is to change someone!

Our church is not the same church it was before their pastor became sick. We are changed because we dared to believe God, to look foolish, to ‘stick our necks out’ and stand on His Word. We are not the same people, not the people we would have been had we just said at the outset, "It’s terminal; God, just please give them grace till he dies." We are changed because we dared to believe, dared to lay down our reputations and our religious notions. Our faith has been enlarged.

Our great God DOES heal, and He does heal today. He IS "Jehovah Rophe", the God who heals all our diseases. However, sometimes His healing comes in ways we do not expect. After all, His ways are not ours, His thoughts are not our thoughts. They surpass what we could ever imagine!

So now, I am a widow. While not my choice, I embrace this new life! I wait with baited breath for what He has in store for us all! God is good all the time. All these things are going to work together for a good that is beyond our wildest imaginings.

And I hear the applause from heaven as one witness, in particular, shouts, "Go, girl!"