a cloud of witnesses

Written by Rebecca Vickery

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, 2 fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. 3 Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.  Hebrews 12:1-3

Juliet spent almost every day of the first few months of her bartonella treatment on a heating pad.  We each had one.  She could hardly move, and I didn’t expect her to.  Now that I was going through the same treatment, we understood one another better.  I could bare witness to her in a way that my husband who rarely gets sick could not.  The expectations that I put on her for chores and other things were very different than they would have been if she had been well.  This seems obvious, but with invisible illness, it isn’t always.  

Early in our treatment, I watched her get up and go into the kitchen for the first time in a while.  I encouraged her as she took two steps, paused, three steps, more pause, etc.  She made it to the kitchen counter and finally to some water.  To anyone else looking (without seeing) it was a small feat.  But because I knew how hard it had become for myself to move, I could see her.  I cheered her on.  

There have been times in this journey when people have reached out to me to encourage me.  And there are times I when I have not felt a lot of external support.  Chronic illness, long term treatments, anything that allows a person to be persistently isolated and alone can lead to gaps in encouragement.  It’s a busy world out there, and not everyone takes the time to remember you if you aren’t actively reaching out to them.  

But the Bible says, the Lord is close to the brokenhearted.  He saves those who are crushed in spirit.  The Lord can meet with us even when we feel forgotten.  In the process of our family’s many years dealing with Lyme disease, we have had a lot of limitations.  Social gatherings became a thing of the past.  Celebrate Recovery meetings also became a thing of the past.  The support groups that I built up over the last few years were not present in my suffering.  It simply wasn’t possible to surround myself with people who could uplift me in person.

Everything I needed, I needed to get directly from the Lord.  What I could not do, He did.  I found that I went from desperate and needing connection to being able to turn around and offer comfort to others.  In the beginning, it started with praying for friends on Facebook.  Sometimes I would receive a message of encouragement from other friends who were fellow sufferers.  This frequently would give me enough boost to turn around and encourage others.  I could not be in someone’s space to cheer them on, but I could offer them encouragement via Facebook messenger.  I knew what it was to be alone, and I knew that I was far from truly alone.  I knew I could take my burdens to God, and I knew there were others who could not.  I knew there were others that did not know they could talk to God directly, so I talked to God and lifted them up to Him.  

One such time, I was praying for a friend who had recently lost her husband.  He had fought a long hard battle with cancer and shortly before Christmas went home to be with the Lord.  One update, she made a public speech thanking some people who had previously supported her.  I prayed for her while she spoke, and suddenly I had this crystal-clear image of her husband surrounded by a great number of people.  He was smiling, and his face was restored and radiant.  I was delighted and thought how lovely an image to share with my friend.  Maybe he was in their cloud of witnesses now.  But then I saw another familiar face.  My beautiful first friend as a married woman, she was about my mom’s age.  She passed away in a car accident a number of years ago.  

Now I was confused.  The image was still so clear, but I was asking the Lord, wait, I thought you meant that image for my friend.  I didn’t know her husband very well, but there he was next to my sweet friend Pam.  And I thought, how many hours did I spend praying for Shane and his family.  Why wouldn’t it make sense for him to be in my cloud of witnesses?  We were connected by Jesus, and we were connected by massive amounts of prayer.  I was laughing and crying at the scene.  

I delighted in the picture that was an encouragement to my heart.  Maybe that was the part I was not quite understanding about the great cloud of witnesses.  Since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, even when we were unseen by human eyes, we were understood.  We were loved much, not just by God but by those who had gone before us.  If we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses, they bear witness to our pain, our sorrows, our heavy burdens.   

It can be so much easier to keep going when we know we have people in our corner.  We may not all have a cloud of people in person every day spurring us on in love and good deeds.  But as believers in Jesus, we all have a cloud of witnesses who can bear witness in our daily existence, even when we feel alone.