The plane was already loud before takeoff.

Kids squirmed as we tried to get everyone buckled. Someone was already negotiating snacks. The usual struggle of traveling with a large family group. Somewhere in the middle of the chaos I noticed how my aunt was sitting.

She had a brace on her right arm and was holding her phone carefully with both hands. I felt that familiar internal tension — the quiet awareness, the question of should I say something?

Once everyone was settled, I seized my opening.

I walked over to my aunt and asked what happened. She’d had ligament damage in her forearm. I pointed at her large travel purse on the seat beside her and asked if she could lift it.

She tried. With one arm, nothing. Too painful. With both, maybe halfway before the pain stopped her.

I asked if I could pray for her. She said yes.

I prayed something short and simple and asked her to try again.

This time, she lifted the bag past parallel. Surprise crossed her face.

“Well,” I said, half-smiling, half-awkward, “God didn’t pay for your healing halfway so let’s keep going.”

I prayed again.

She lifted it higher. No pain.

I prayed one more time.

Now she was standing doing one-handed curls with her bag.

Two days later, I found myself in a similar situation praying for my mom’s arm.

Microfractures. Weakness. Pain. The same uncertainty about recovery. We tested it. It was weak. We prayed. She tested again. Strength returned. A few minutes later she was lifting an old iron lantern off an outdoor table with her injured arm like it was nothing.

Same process. Same movement. Same outcome.

Something shifted inside me at that point.

Not excitement. Something quieter.

A sense of I’ve been here before.

Later that year I had the chance to pray for my mother-in-law.

Her wrist was badly injured. She’d been to doctors and it wasn’t improving. Surgery was inevitable. On paper, it wasn’t that different from my mom’s or aunt’s situation.

But it felt different.

The room felt smaller. More watchful. I didn’t want to make things awkward, so I waited until I had a moment to talk with her alone.

She said yes when I asked to pray.

As I stood there, I told myself there was nothing to worry about. I’d seen healing like this before. I knew what to do.

I prayed exactly as I had for my mom and my aunt.

Same words.
Same tone.
Same routine. 

This time? Nothing. 

No change. No improvement.

I thanked her, smiled, and slipped out of the room.

I didn’t pray for her wrist again before her surgery. And the question I asked myself that afternoon stayed with me for months:

If I did everything right, what went wrong?

After the first couple of times, you stop bracing yourself.

You remember how it went — where you paused, what you said, when you told them to test it again. You step into the next moment expecting it to unfold the same way.

Nothing about it feels spiritual or dramatic. It feels settled.

When nothing changes, your attention turns inward. You run back through it, checking for any details you might have overlooked. A word. A movement. A misstep.

It worked before.

If it worked before, it should work again.

That’s the belief forming underneath it all:

“If I follow the right process, the outcome should follow.”

When it doesn’t, the explanation feels obvious.

Something must have gone wrong on my end.

What failed wasn’t your method.

And it wasn’t God stepping back.

What changed was the place you were starting from.

Authority doesn’t come from remembering what worked, or from confidence built on repetition.

Authority comes from love.

From staying anchored in what God has already decided: about Himself, about you, about the person in front of you.

Love doesn’t ask whether you said it right.
It doesn’t measure tone.
It doesn’t flinch when outcomes vary.

Love acts because it knows what belongs.

When confidence fades, love remains.
When results change, love doesn’t.

When you trust God’s heart instead of a process, you’re no longer trying to make something happen.

You’re agreeing with what He wants.

Until next time,
Addison