Life has a funny way of throwing the unexpected at you. You’re going through life feeling like you have it all together and then BAM!, your two toddler boys are holding up women’s underwear in a store and you are rendered completely speechless. I’m not speechless very often but when I am it’s a pretty profound moment in my life. This life we live can throw things our way that are not expected, but how we handle the unexpected is what really matters.
In January of 2014, I woke up in a puddle of blood. Knowing this was not normal I called my doctor in a panic and I immediately went in for an ultra sound. My husband, Jordan, and I sat there in silence as the tech took pictures. In the past, every ultra sound I had was to see a baby, but this time the monitor was not facing me and the tech wasn’t making cute statements about a developing baby. The look on her face was serious and I knew something wasn’t right. Normally in moments like these I would try to make light of a tense situation and try to make people laugh… but this time I had nothing to say, much less something funny. We were moved into a room to wait for the doctor and all I could look at was the clock on the wall. I watched every second tick by and it felt like an eternity, but finally a doctor, who wasn’t my normal doctor, came in. She was holding the ultrasound pictures and her expression was serious. She said, “You have a growth on your left ovary that is the size of a grapefruit. Your doctor is in surgery today and we are trying to get him over here to talk with you.” Then she left the room.
I am a pretty strong person. I can usually see the positive in hard situations, but in this moment I couldn’t look at Jordan because I knew I would lose it, and I hate crying. All kinds of thoughts started to rush through my brain. Was it cancer? Who is going to take care of my kids? Jordan can’t really cook; everyone is going to starve to death! And what happens if he gets re-married? I would have to come back from the dead and kill people. What will everybody do without ME??? On the fear scale, with one being a spider and ten being clowns, this was an eight. It was not one of my finest hours.
The next day I had an appointment with my doctor and he reassured me that it was likely just a benign tumor but we needed to have it removed right away. I am a healthy person; I rarely get sick because, quite frankly, I don’t have time to get sick. I don’t get injured and I’ve never had surgery. This was all new territory for me. Apparently my ovaries did not get the memo that I did not give them permission to grow extra things and that I don’t have time for their crap! Did they decide to stage a coup because I wasn’t having any more babies?
In this moment I had a choice: either I believed that God is still good, even now, or not. We prayed God would heal me and the growth would disappear, but that is not how He chose to heal me. Even still, He is in control and it says in Psalm 136: 1, “Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good. His love endures forever.” This is what I chose to believe and this is what I will continue to believe. It doesn’t say anywhere that this life is going to be easy, but it says our God is good. When we choose to say this in the midst of the hard times, it takes the sting out of the situation. This took my focus off of the immensity of what lay before me and placed it on God and His enormity trumped this situation, hands down.
When things happen in our lives that we never see coming we get to make the choice to praise Him anyway. He is the keeper of our lives and we need to remember that He sees all and knows all. Even when all hell breaks loose, He is good. Today, even if you are in the midst of a storm, choose to say, “I trust you” and “God you are good.” This frame of thought removes the pressure to try and figure it out and puts the situation in Gods hands. His hands are the only ones I trust to make the wrong things right. He has never let me down and He isn’t going to start now.
For Reflection
• What situation are you currently in where you need to make the choice to believe God is good? Is it a sickness or a loss? Is it a disappointment?
• Has your focus been on the trials or God? If it has been on the trials, how do you feel? Defeated? Frustrated? Angry?
• How would/ does it feel to focus on God? Relieved? Encouraged?
