Skip to main content

I Will Trust You

"Has God forgotten to be merciful?  Has he in anger witheld his compassion?"  Psalm 77:9

Have you ever laid the law down with God?  You know . . . tell God what He really shouldn't dare do or allow to happen.  Perhaps you are way more spiritual than I am, but in an effort to be transparent and honest, I have to admit that I have told God exactly what was fair game in my life and what was off limits.

In 2012, when I thought we had faced the worst year imaginable after enduring two miscarriages -- one at 18 weeks gestation -- I reasoned with God that losing a child that I had never held in my arms was such a devastating experience, so certainly my two healthy, life-filled children were my reminder to be grateful for what He had already blessed me with.  Certainly we wouldn't be required to face anything worse than a broken bone or typical childhood illness with them.  Certainly God would see that our perseverance through such pain deserved some sort of reward in the form of health and longevity for our two living children.

God, did you forget that deal we had?

God, did you forget to be merciful?

God . . . Why?

Those are questions that I have actually asked God.  I felt like I had no other choice but to get completely raw with Him after a normal Friday quickly turned into the worst day of our family's lives.  Two years ago today, a normal sick visit to the doctor turned into a barrage of bloodwork.  A normal, rainy Friday night turned into an emergency trip to the nearest children's hospital.  A simple fever turned into a diagnosis of leukemia for our then 11-year old son.  That sudden and unexpected road that our family was forced down made me feel like asking God tough questions was fair-game.

I should have known that my tough questions didn't phase my Heavenly Daddy.  He let me act out and behave as if, for some strange reason, I deserved to have that deal upheld that I made with Him two years prior.  He showed me heavenly grace like only He can and overlooked my tantrum until I was able to calmly rest in his embrace.

What I didn't realize was that what we went through in 2012 was merely a warm-up for 2014.  Had we have not gone through the trauma of 2012, I don't think we would have been prepared for that rainy night on September 12, 2014.  You see, God doesn't throw us into the deep end without first teaching us how to tread water.  He taught me something so important in 2012, something that would be my saving grace in 2014.  He taught me how to trust Him.

You see, up until then I never had to really trust Him.  When things are good and life doesn't throw you any punches, there's no need to place complete trust in Him because you feel like everything is under control.  Up until then I had trusted Him with my soul, but I hadn't trust Him with my life, and more importantly, with my child's life.

I found myself repetitively uttering the same phrase that I did in 2012 . . .

"I will trust You."  

It became a habit.  I'd say it

After meeting with the doctors . . .

after seeing the relentless effects of chemo . . .

and after seeing it slowly wear down the spirit of our daughter who was watching her brother so bravely fight this dreaded disease.

I uttered those words that God divinely placed in my soul in 2012.  Wanna know the funny thing?  I started to actually believe what I was saying!  They became more than words.  I wasn't saying them as a way to try to convince myself anymore.  I was saying them because I knew that my God was able to be trusted.  He had proven trustworthy, so I committed to fully trusting my child in His hands.

Verses like this one became  my rally cry:

Let the morning bring me word of your unfailing love,
for I have put my trust in you.
Show me the way I should go,
for to you I entrust my life.
Psalm 143:8

If I could tweak David's Psalm just a bit, I would write it to say this:

Let the morning bring me word of your unfailing love,
for I have FINALLY put my trust in you.
Show me the way I should go,
for to you I entrust my life, AND MY CHILD'S.

On this rainy night of September 12, I am so thankful to be on this side of the journey than where we were two years ago.  I am thankful that we are about 16 months away from his last chemo treatment.  That seems like an eternity on some days, but we've learned not to look much further than about a week ahead when on a cancer journey.  

I'm also thankful that even though my boy has cancer, cancer doesn't have my boy.  He doesn't want to be singled out -- as you've noticed I've not even mentioned his name -- and he wants to be treated like a normal 13 year-old kid.  His perseverance and positive outlook has sustained us on days when being the parent of a sick kid stunk!  We could write a book on everything we've learned from him.

As another September 12 draws to a close, I can't help but to thank my God one more time for being so good.  I thank Him for His love, His peace, His big shoulders, but most importantly, for being a God who has proven worthy to be trusted time and time again.





Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Heartfelt Reflections of a Country Church

The smells, sounds, and people of country churches stir an emotion within me that is deep and powerful. For those who have never had the opportunity to experience this blessed experience, let me explain.   From the moment you step into the vestibule (never called a foyer in a rural church), you instantly smell the footsteps of every person who has crossed that threshold - the mother with a load of kids in tow, the farmer, the truck driver, the wayward child. If those paneled walls could talk, they would tell of grace and guilt and sorrow and joy that couldn’t be hidden on the faces of the souls that dared to cross that doorway. Those walls would write books of clinched fists, tears on the altar, and singing from the saints. The smell of the aged carpet, whose color may have caused an outright quarrel in a business meeting, the creak of the floor, and the golden memorial tags lead you to a nostalgic thing of days gone by - a pew, padded if you’re lucky.   As you wait for the ob...

I love my kids, BUT. . . .

"Schoolhouse Rock" was one of mine and my husband's favorite educational past times.  Bob Dorough, writer for "Schoolhosue Rock," was a genius when he put educational factoids to quirky music and cute cartoons.  From the preamble to the Constitution, to parts of speech, multiplication facts, how electricity works, and much more, Mr. Dorough slyly disguised learning and actually made it fun! Like all good parents, we passed this educational relic on to our kids.  One of our favorite songs from "Schoolhouse Rock" is without a doubt " Conjunction Junction ."  Its jazzy rhythm easily gets stuck in your head for the rest of your day ( sorry in advance! ).  This song teaches how conjunctions mechanically work in a sentence and what their purpose is.  The conjunction 'BUT' is one that we use all the time to connect two sentences or a clause to a sentence. "I like pizza,  BUT  I don't like olives on it." "I want to...

Taking the Mask Off

If I’ve learned anything over the last few weeks of wearing masks when going out in public, it’s that wearing a mask makes it hard to breathe.   The trapped air recirculating in and out gets thick and burdensome. The same is true for the invisible mask I wear on the days that I’m trying to hide the reality of what’s going on below the surface.   There comes a point when the air that has gotten trapped between my invisible mask and my unfortunate reality gets so heavy that ripping it off and gasping for a dose of fresh, life-giving oxygen is the only remedy.   ( Cue the proverbial mask selfie that everyone has had to take during quarantine. ) I think many of us frequently wear a mask, intentionally or unintentionally, to hide the reality of what’s underneath. We mask up to present a façade. A watered-down version of the true us. A suffocating misrepresentation of our current existence.  We’re all guilty.  One of my favorite person...