I don’t know when she wrote the article in the Messenger or when I even read it but the day she wrote it, it could well have been that God drew nigh to her in her quiet time and said, “Write. For I have someone who needs to read this. She won’t read it right away, but when the time is right, I, the Lord, will make it happen.” And the day indeed did come, when someone nine hundred and twenty miles away read it and was never the same again.

I had been having a hard time leaving things with God when I read it and although the article was short and the subject was not expounded on, God got his point across to me. My friend had written about the day the Shunammite woman’s son had died. God had already done great things for her through Elisha and now her son, which Elisha had promised her she would conceive, had taken sick and died. 

She took him and laid him upon the bed they had made up for Elisha and went out and shut the door. Then she rode for Elisha. When Elisha came, he went into his room where the dead boy lay, and shut the door behind him. Then, he healed her son. But the part my friend emphasized that day was how the Shunammite woman trusted God enough to leave her dead son to Him and go out and shut the door.

Months later, this article was still coming back to my mind and months later, God was still using it. We all have areas in our life that God wants us to give to Him in such a way that we go out and shut the door. Yet that seems to be one of the hardest things to do. We want to see God work. We want to know He is doing something. We watch carefully for the first signs saying He is doing the great thing. We’re disappointed when the minutes, hours, and days pass with the dead boy still lying there. And maybe all God is waiting for, is for us to go out, shut the door, and leave our dead boy with Him.

I sat there at my bar with the message of this article floating around in my head once again. It seemed every time I tried to pick up my dead boy, whatever that looked like to me in the moment, my heart got anxious and I couldn’t see all the life still around me. My dead boy became paramount to me as I’d beg God for healing many times over, wondering why He hadn’t healed yet. Alternatively, every time I prayed over the dead boy, laid him at Jesus’ feet, and went out and purposely shut the door on him, my life was full, my heart was happy, and my spirit was free. 

Thousands of years later, the Shunammite woman is still touching my heart. What is the dead boy in my life today? Maybe I have multiple dead boys, all lying in the same room or strung out over the earth. But can I leave them all and trust God to take care of them? Can I go out and shut the door firmly behind me? Oh for the faith of the Shunammite woman. 

There are days my dead boy has come back to life and there are days where my dead boy has never regained his breath. There are still other days, and maybe these are the days that are hardest to trust, when my dead boy has been healed only partially, but is still a cripple. Can I still keep the door shut then or do I feel the need to keep bringing him out to try to fix his crippled hands and feet? His crippled heart? Feel the need to dwell on him?

God wants me to trust Him fully, completely, and without measure. And when I do, the anxiety leaves me as I leave my dead boy with Him, go out and shut the door, and walk in the life that is still all around me.