After Wally leaves for work, I bring my Bible, journal, and tea into the garden. A light mist hovers over the fields across the road, and I am surprised to see tender green shoots of corn forming rows where yesterday there was nothing but dirt. All around me, Dame’s Rocket thrusts purple and white spires toward the skies like holy hands reaching toward heaven. Boxwood shimmers greenly in the breeze, and a yellow weed at the fence line bursts into flame as a sunbeam peeks through the clouds.

The words of Psalm 63, my reading this morning, reverberate through my mind. “O God, thou art my God, I seek thee, my soul thirsts for thee; my flesh faints for thee, as in a dry and weary land where no water is. So I have looked upon thee in the sanctuary, beholding thy power, and glory. Because thy steadfast love is better than life, my lips will praise thee. So I will bless thee as long as I live; I will lift up my hands and call on thy name.”

In the sanctuary of this garden the desert landscape of my heart enters an oasis of green, flowing with streams of living water. As I drink from the cup held out to me, praise wells over. With the praise, yesterday’s testimony, given by a woman at the Oxford Vineyard, floods my heart, mind, and soul.

Jessica, a high school student, has suffered with cancer for ten years. Because of the nature of the illness and the rigors of treatment, she has missed much school and many of the pleasures of adolescence that we take for granted. Jessica wanted so badly to go to the prom, but had resigned herself to missing yet one more rite of passage. Her friends, however, had another idea. They surprised Jessica by buying her a ticket, along with the perfect dress, shoes, make up, hair-styling (it would have to be a wig-styling, but Jessica was okay with that), and a car—a Hummer no less—for the big night. As if that wasn’t enough to knock a girl’s socks off, when the prom court was announced at school, Jessica’s name was on the list.

The night of the prom, Jessica and her band of sisters climbed into the Hummer for a night never to be forgotten. Too weak to dance, Jessica soaked in the music, the whirl of color and motion on the dance floor, and conversation with friends. When the King and Queen (senior class) and Prince and Princess (junior class) were announced, Jessica couldn’t believe her ears when she was named Princess of the Prom.

Jessica wasn’t sure how the Prince would feel about dancing the traditional dance between Prince and Princess with a girl with cancer. But God had orchestrated things so that the Prince was a young man she’d known since elementary school—someone she felt totally comfortable with. What could have been an awkward moment turned into a moment of great beauty as this Prince took Jessica’s hand, guided her onto the dance floor, put his arms around her, and whispered in her ear. “Have courage. Be strong. God is with you.”

The stuff of fairy tales, right? And yet, this is what we’re promised when we walk the road of faith and hope in Jesus. Jesus meets us right where we are—in the muddy, messy, cancer-riddled parts of our lives. The Prince of Peace meets us in the desert, guides us to an oasis, takes us into His arms, holds us tightly and whispers in our ears.

“Have courage. Be strong. God is with you.”

Jessica’s story is a universal story. A story meant for each and every one of us. For me. For you. For those who live with disability. For those facing death. For those who find themselves tripping along a boulder-strewn path. For those who wander in the desert of suffering.

“Have courage. Be strong. God is with you.”

As I sip my tea, a female goldfinch lands, with a great flutter of wings, on a branch just a few feet from my chair. Her mate, flashier by far, joins her. She pecks away at the alpaca nesting ball, hung by the birdfeeder for easily accessible nesting material. Beak full, she makes her undulating flight to the buckeye tree across the garden. Her handsome mate follows. Somewhere, in one of these trees, a nest and the future awaits.

“Have courage. Be strong. God is with you.”

(Thanks to Becky Maglich for the metaphor of Jesus as our Prince)