One in a Million

You wanna know what I am bad at?

Learning lessons the first time around. Or the fifth.

My innate tendencies make me fall victim to worry and anxiety which turns into planning and controlling situations.

No matter how many times God tries to teach me He will always provide, I fall into the same cycle. I am in awe of how He orchestrates and ordains everything to happen. I am pleased with the ultimate outcome. I go back into my routine. Worry and anxiety start to creep in. I try to control my plan for my life. God steps in and rocks my world. He shows me his ways are better. Repeat.

For the first 24 years of my life, things went pretty well for me. Outside of little inconveniences, I lived a pretty charmed life. But right around the time that I really started getting serious with my faith and being mentored- things started to seemingly take a turn. I had never really dealt with much adversity or change in my life until 2 years ago.

I was reading a book called, “If you want to walk on water, you’ve got to get out of the boat” by John Ortberg recently and I ran across the story of David.

For a long time, David experienced success. He was anointed by Samuel to be the king of Israel. As a boy he defeated Goliath. King Saul chose him as a warrior and musician. The army loved him, the people wrote songs about him. David knew what it was to walk on water. He trusted God and for a long time everything he touched turned to gold.

Then a strange thing happened. One by one all of those things were stripped away. David lost his job. Saul became jealous and took away David’s position in the army, his security and source of income. Then he lost his wife. So David fled to visit Samuel. But Saul caught wind and tracked him down. Soon after Samuel, his mentor, died. Then David ran to his best friend Jonathan who refused to raise the sword on his father for David. His job and marriage ended in failure. His mentor died. His best friend was out of his life… then it got worse.

The only place David had left to go was Gath, the land of his mortal enemies. He failed to find refuge even there so he escaped to the cave of Adullam. While David once had wealth, power, fame, friends, and security for a guaranteed future… now he was running for his life and living in a cave.

David spent 10 years on the run, living in caves. He then came across a group to form a little community. They weren’t your ideal group. They were in distress, in debt, and discontent. But he became a community with them anyway. They created a village named Ziklag. One day they came home to discover their village was gone. It had been sacked and their wives and children taken away. The Bible says David and the people with him “wept until they had no more strength to weep.”

That sounds bad enough but the plot thickens. The men’s grief turned to anger toward David and they threatened to stone him. Here we are told that “David strengthened himself in the Lord his God.”

It must have been tempting for David to think “I could get out of the cave now and become king.” But he would not do it. David discovered that more than he wanted to be king, he wanted to belong to God. He would rather please God and live in a cave than displease God and sit on the throne. For all David knew, he was going to die in that cave. But we know this is not how the story ends. David finds his refuge in God.

Ortberg notes, “This is a great secret of spiritual life. When every other resource was gone, when he reached utter failure, David encouraged himself in the Lord.”

Now my experiences pale in comparison to that of what David, the prophets, and the disciples experienced in Biblical times. But I feel like that has been the journey that God has taken me on over the last two years.

I was reflecting back to when I really started noticing God wearing down my walls of control. I keep coming back to 2020 “the COVID year.” When 2020 started I was for sure that would be the best year of my life thus far. I was finally finishing up my doctorate in PT, I was going to start my career, I was getting married, Graham and I would get our own place and start our life together.

Then March rolled around and I was on my clinical rotations when COVID shut down the world. Every week was an unknown. Would I get to stay and finish? Would the requirements change? Would things get pushed back closer to my wedding? The fear and anxiety of the unknown crippled me. I had never experienced a situation I couldn’t control like this before.

But God provided. Better than I could have imagined. I actually got to stay on my outpatient clinical 5 extraweeks and forego the hospital setting so I would finish my rotations 5 weeks earlier to have time to prepare for boards… because my whole wedding was planned already, of course.

Well May rolls around and things in the world were still very uncertain. By June they were getting better but my venue still had significant restrictions on guest count, no dance floor or head table, no movement of guests between tables, etc. So I had to make a decision… do I cancel the wedding I had dreamed of since I was 8 and replan the entire thing in 6 weeks?

Ultimately, Graham and I decided we wanted to be able to celebrate with everyone in a low stress environment… so we cancelled our venue and I texted every person invited to the wedding we were switching to my parents house.

I was content with the switch but my heart had a hard time accepting I wouldn’t have the wedding I dreamed of my entire life. I was mostly disappointed by the number of family members and friends that would not be able to attend because of health and travel restrictions. This was not my plan.

Well after boards got pushed back (again, not my plan)… I took them and got married 3 days later. But guess what? The radar showed rain alllllll day. For my outdoor wedding. I was like okay God, c’mon. I feel like COVID brides should at least be given nice weather lol.

But again, He provided. It was the most perfect day I could have ever imagined. The rain stopped right as the photographer came. It was 70 degrees and overcast so people weren’t too hot or cold. And a drop of rain did not fall until the last song played at our reception.

I thought my life would be blissful after I got through the stress of that week.

But then I entered adulthood. Bills. Work. The day to day monotony. I was struggling to find contentment in a job. But God provided. God gave me a job. He provided the money we needed to pay our bills.

Spring/Summer of 2021 rolled around and in 6 weeks we lost both Graham’s grandma and grandpa. They were both in their 90s so it was a celebration that they were dancing pain free with Jesus now, but still very emotionally heavy.

Things started to go pretty smooth for a few months after that. No big changes, just the way I like.

Then October came around and rocked my perfect little world. It made everything up until this point seem like the tiniest problem to ever exist.

Y’all know what I am talking about but I am just going to give a snapshot of the journey because I cant miss an opportunity to share this miracle. In October, my whole family got COVID. I thought it would just run its normal cycle, they would be sick for a few weeks then gradually work their way back into normal life. Well my mom and sisters got better of the course of the 2 weeks by my dad kept getting worse.

Worse to the point of having to be admitted to the hospital. He was on the COVID unit at St. Rita’s for 3 days. He had therapy in trying to get him up and around. He would be worse in the morning but better at night. So I just started to expect that cycle for a while.

Well Monday November 8th rolled around. My mom called my work office and I knew it wasn’t good. She was in a panic and said they are putting your dad on the vent because his sats were crashing on high flow.  By the time I made it to the hospital they had him vented and X-rays taken. The ICU doctor took us back into the meeting room and told us that dad had ARDS. He had a 10% chance of survival. All they could do is flip him back and forth on his belly and back and pray to God his lungs cleared. But then Graham said something about ECMO. They started the program several months before and had 2 in the whole hospital. And 1 just opened up the day before. God provided.

So they took him down that night and inserted his ECMO. The cardiologist said that he wasn’t out of the park just having the machine. He risked clotting, bleeding out, cardiac arrest and he would probably be on there for 60-90 days before his lungs healed enough to wean off. Then he would spend another month in ICU and then several months in rehab to learn how to walk again. So looking at 6 months of being in the hospital.

The next day we went to see him and talk to him while he lay there in a coma. The doctor said they halted progression, his lungs even looked a little better. Day 2 and 3 go by and he continues to get better. They lowered his ECMO dependence and his lungs were healing, picking up some of the breathing work load. By Friday- yes 4 days later. They took him off ECMO. By the weekend they had him out of a coma just on nasal cannula for a little assistance breathing.

By the next Monday he was up and walking. By the middle of the week he didn’t need oxygen at all. By Thursday he was moved to a step down. By Friday he was sent home without any oxygen. So if you couldn’t keep up on that math it was 11 days from the day they put him on ECMO. 11 days from the day we were told he probably wouldn’t survive. 11 days what they said would take 6 months. The doctors said I’m their entire career, they had never seen anything like it. God provided. God healed. God performed a miracle.

The next weeks were like walking on egg shells just praying nothing would back slide. By January dad went back to work and things felt like they were going back to normalcy.

2020 was supposed to be the best year ever… in hind sight it was pretty good but felt like a rollercoaster at the time. 2021 was just straight up not a good year. But 2022. 2022 was going to be the best year for sure.

Graham finally was finished with PA school after working SO hard for 7 years. He was scheduled to take his boards in January, we were going to Florida, he was going to get a job right after, we were going to buy a house by March, we were going to start a family and hopefully have a baby by the end of the year so I could be on maternity leave over the holidays. Life was going to be grand.

A whole 2 weeks in to 2022, MY plans came crashing down.

The day Graham took his boards, I had all the faith in the world in him. He is so intelligent and so so good at what he does. But I had this pit in my stomach as I prayed on my way to work. I refrained from saying, “Lord, let your will be done” because I was scared of what that would be… I just had this feeling that God was going to use this to teach me another lesson on planning. Unfortunately, Graham had to be in the cross fire of that lesson.

It took about a week to get the results back so we were in Florida, living care free, excited to move on to the next chapter of our lives and buy a house. On Wednesday he opened the results and found out he barely missed the cut. Like so heartbreakingly close. The close that you almost wished you just bombed it instead.

So he had to wait 3 more months to take them again. He had a hard time getting hired to work anywhere during the wait period because he was “over qualified.” (A tangent I could go on in our employee shortage, but I will refrain.) So I spent 90% of my time stressing about how to buy a house so my plan didn’t fall behind. God said “oh you of little faith.”

Finally about 6 weeks before he retook his exam, a 3 week project opened up at St Rita’s to help scan files at the hospital. So he took that just for some extra money. While he was there, a recruiter came by and found out he was a PA. She told him about this position that would be opening up and they were hiring 2 new PAs. It was literally his dream job he was hoping for all throughout school.

Had he passed his boards in January he would have taken a job he wasn’t excited about and probably wouldn’t be content. Had he gotten any of the jobs I was pushing for, he wouldn’t have been at St Rita’s the very moment his dream job opened up and probably would have never heard of it. God provided. Not in my timing, but in His.

You think I would be getting good at this trusting God thing… but wait there’s more failure on the horizon.

All during this time, we had our hearts broken by a few house opportunities and I thought I would have to settle on something less. All the previous opportunities we would have to significantly over pay in this market so I just accepted that’s the way it was going to be. Well one day at work I find out one of my patients was moving to Florida and selling their house. WHAT. It was a few houses down from our best friends in a cute little neighborhood 4 minutes from my work. WHAT.

I was like yes God thank you!! Well long story short, we were out bidded. I was like seriously God why would you place this in our lap just to take it away?? I failed the test. God once again said “oh you of little faith.”

A week later we got a call from our realtor saying the previous buyers backed out for an unknown reason. They paid for the inspection report that we could have and the sellers said they would give it to us at list price. AND they ended up paying half of our closing costs. So we ended up saving about 4,000 dollars. God provided AGAIN, not in my timing. But in His.

In the midst of all that, I found out back in March that I was pregnant. It was literally perfect timing. We could share with our families at Easter, announce to the public on Mother’s Day. Do our gender reveal on Fourth of July and be due the week before Thanksgiving. But once again God have us a no, it’s not my timing.

This one hit hard. Then after the d&c I started to get bad headaches, I lost part of my vision, I was having heart palpitations, and had to have a CT done because they thought I had a pulmonary embolus. On top of that I had to see my best friend be pregnant, we were only due 8 weeks apart. They had infant dedications at church. I had to go to a baby shower. Everyone around me was asking if I had kids or wanted to start a family soon. I felt like God was throwing it all in my face and telling me to deal with it.

But that’s not My Father. That was Satan. Satan was filling my with lies, drowning me in the water, telling me God wasn’t enough to overcome this. But you know what?? He is. I forced myself back in to praying, even though I didn’t have words. I didn’t want to pray for His plan because I liked mine better. But I just talked to God. I told Him I was mad, sad, jealous. He held me in His arms and said I know, it’s okay. When my heart was tender he didn’t say “oh you of little faith.” He said, “just be held, let me walk with you.” He held my hand. He protected me from the evil Satan was trying to push me into. He gave me peace and comfort only he can provide.

I am taken back to think about my reading on King David and his 10 years he was on the run, living in caves, his world shattered around him.

“The cave is where you find yourself when you thought you were going to do great things, have a great family, or boldly go where no one had gone but it becomes clear that things will not work out as you dreamed. Maybe you are in the cave right now. From a loss of a job. From financial pressure. Maybe your dreams of having a family have been shattered. Maybe you have lost your health. For whatever reason, you are in the cave right now. If you are not in the cave right now, just wait. You will be. Nobody plans on ending up in the cave, but sooner or later everybody logs some time there.

The hardest thing about being in the cave is that you begin to wonder whether God has lost track of you. Did he forget his promises? Does he remember where I am? Will I ever get out of the cave?

But there is one thing to know. The cave is where God does his best work in molding and shaping lives. Sometimes when all the props and crutches in your life get stripped away and you find you have only God, you discover that God is enough. Sometimes, when your worst fears of inadequacy are confirmed and you discover that you really are out of your league, you experience the liberation of realizing that it is okay to be inadequate and that God wants his power to flow through your weakness.

One of the great gifts failure can give us is the recognition that we are loved and valued by God precisely when we are in the cave of failure. I am just as loved by God when I have fallen flat on my face.

If I am walking closely with God, if I have the sense of God being with me, I find that problems lose their ability to damage my spirit.

This is your life, these are your failures. No magic eraser is going to make these things disappear. You cant get out of it, so get into it.

Sometimes we are in a cave and nothing we can do can get us out. We can’t fix it, heal it, escape it. All we can do is trust God. Finding ultimate refuge in God means you become so immersed in his presence, so convinced of his goodness, so devoted to his lordship that you find even the cave is a perfectly safe place to be because he is there with you.

Sometimes there is no way out of the cave. In those times, find refuge in God. At that time, you will come to learn that God knows about caves because Jesus suffered like us, and for us. Jesus understood that sinking feeling even more than David did. No one has ever descended the way Jesus did.

Jesus also lost his position, his status as a teacher, his safety and security. He lost not only his best friend, but all his friends, in spite of his teachings and warnings. His life, too, was endangered But his failure got worse. He went to a cross and died. All his dreams, and all the dreams he inspired, appeared to die with him. What started as a shining success ended in ignoble failure. And then they put his body in a cave. That was their big mistake. His body was there for three days. But they could not keep him there. They forgot that God does some of his best work in caves.

The cave is where God resurrects dead things.”

Okay. Chills. This whole passage was SOOO convicting to me. The last two years have felt like a whole cycle of running from one cave to the next. But Every. Single. Time. GOD PROVIDES. I don’t have the answers on my most recent cave dwelling, but I am determined in this season to not fall into the cycle of control. To try God’s hand instead of my own. To let things fall in to place without a timeline. I’m committing myself to watch God do his best work in my cave.