The weight of this sorrow presses heavily upon you, and it is not a small thing to watch a creature you love suffer. Yet consider the soul’s posture in such a season. The care of this world, even a care born of tender affection, can choke the word and render the heart unfruitful, casting a thick cloud before the eye of the soul so that it cannot see clearly. I ask you now, not to abandon your natural care for this animal, but to examine it. Does this distress drive you more urgently to cling to the God of all comfort, or does it so enfeeble the soul with grief that you are disinclined for spiritual food, finding the hearing of divine doctrines wearying when your heart is fixed on this one ache? You are not alone in sorrow, for we are all to each other a source of grief, one through a wife, another through a child, another through some loss. Let this serve not to minimize your pain, but to remind you that impatience is an enemy. Do not think yourself uniquely unhappy, nor let the season of temptation make you hasty.
You ask for healing, for the easing of pain, and for a peaceful end. These are natural cries. But consider carefully the order of things: to hear the word of God is to deem no season unseasonable for that traffic, even when you must, as it were, enter into the house of your own sorrow and make your requests known. The gifts of healing are indeed a gift, but why do you suppose they are listed after teaching? Because it is a greater wonder to learn patient submission under affliction than to have the affliction removed. The power of God is more than the healing, for He who has power both punishes and heals. What then is your true request? Is it that the creature be made well, or that your own will be done so you might be spared the bitter cup of witnessing its final hours? I do not speak to wound you, but to fortify you. The husbandman who loses his crop this way or that way equally bewails himself. So it is with us: we perish not only by riches, but by softness; not only by open wickedness, but by a sorrow that refuses the medicine of God’s sovereignty. The loss, you see, is not in the earthly outcome, but in eternal life, should this care so master you that it becomes the thorn choking the seed of faith.
Take up the tools the Physician has placed in your hands. The guiding of your hands with the medication, the labor to keep her calm, this is a mortification, a small crucifixion of your own comfort and fear. Let a willing mind effect here what the sword accomplishes in martyrdom. Do not burn with a love of ease that demands this trial be removed, but let that unreasonable appetite be consumed by the fire of the Spirit. As you speak in Jesus’ name, recall that He who healed often commanded that they tell no man, seeking no display, but only the Father’s glory. So now, let your work be done in quietness, looking to the Teacher and not to the opinion of the multitude. And for her final hour, cast that care utterly upon Him who careth for us. To demand a specific manner of death is to lean on your own understanding. Can you not trust the One who sees the fall of every sparrow to appoint her time according to His wisdom and not your terror? The soul, darkened by passion, is soon wearied and falls back. Do not let this fear form a thick cloud before you. Lay hold of this truth: teaching the soul patience in affliction, the more it is prolonged, the stronger it renders the soul which receives it. Pray then, not to be spared the lesson, but to learn it. That is the true healing, the cure that reaches beyond the grave and into eternity.
Prayer Focus: God, Thank You for loving me. Thank You for loving me, Jesus. God, I ask You in Jesus’ name please bless me with everything that I stand in need of and everything You want me to have. 
