Last year right around this time we held a Tacos and Testimonies event at our church as a women’s event. Several of us shared pieces of our story. I spoke and shared of the transformation we had seen in our relationship with Isaac. How God had moved and restored some deep hurts. I shared this journal entry from May 11, 2018…
Today I will seek to be grateful for everything even if I am filled with fear. The back and forth of hope then unknown. One day Isaac tells me he doesn’t want to be angry anymore and then he doesn’t respond to calls or messages and my mind starts to wonder where he is and what he is doing. Lord please take captive all my thoughts. Take captive my fears and my anxieties and all the things I can’t control. Lord I trust you and love you even if Isaac isn’t ever healed. Even if he ends up homeless, even if he takes his life, even if he cuts again, even if he never gets married, even if….Lord I want so much more for my son. So much. I want joy and peace and happiness and I want him to fully know you, but even if all my wants and desires are not met for my son Lord I will serve you because you have been faithful to me.
A year ago I marveled at how much God had restored. All the things that in 2018 that seemed impossible, God had made possible for us and I was so grateful. I would have never guessed that a year later I would look back at that journal entry and realize that my “even if” fears would become a reality.
So now is where the rubber meets the road I guess isn’t it? That place where faith becomes real and is tested in a way I would never have imagined it would be. It is much easier to write down my worst fears and say I will trust God even if they come true…but could I really walk it out if it were tested?
Today it hurts, this moving forward. It isn’t how I want it to be…but it is how it is. My God is still the same though. He has been faithful and kind and I do praise Him. I am grateful for the ways in which God sustains us even though we now walk forward without Isaac here.
Most of us will not be faced with our greatest fear moments. At least I hope not. I wouldn’t want this for anyone. But I feel like, for me, my relationship with God has remained firm because I have continued to look back at all the ways He as been faithful. So that even in these times of hurt and pain I can look past my circumstance and to the One who knows my future, who holds everything in His hands, and trust that God still has me in His care.
I hope you have that assurance today too. Even if the worst happens, even when it hurts…God IS with you.
A pastor once asked a Sunday school class I was in: “What do you think happened eventually to everyone Jesus healed?” We sat there a good three minutes in silence. He responded: “They died. And so did He.” This knocked my socks off. Even if what we think is healing comes, death follows, death always follows, and we as Christians know that the life eternal follows that. The Lord is good and His mercy endures forever.