Trusting God with the Uncertainties

A few months into our first year of marriage, we took and unexpected trip to the emergency room. Our plans were a getaway to Steamboat Springs for my birthday, but within hours of arriving our celebration turned into an ER visit. Tests confirmed my husband had a kidney infection. So instead of enjoying a relaxing time away, we spent time together in a hospital, thankfully with medical care to nurse my husband back to health.

It was kind of a wake-up call for me that the road ahead might be bumpy, because spinal cord injury comes with complications. When messages can’t travel to the brain like they once could, life looks different and things can go wrong.

Things can go wrong for any of us in a split second but being married to someone who navigates life on wheels heightens my awareness.

And at the end of last month something went wrong again.

As I was wrapping up things for the evening before heading to bed, a cry over the monitor sent me to toddler land. I spent the next hour and a half rocking my littlest back to sleep because he was convinced I was a better bed than his crib.

When I finally crawled in bed around 1:15 in the morning, the familiar, unsettling sounds coming from my husband sent off an alarm in my head. Uncontrollable shivering, teeth chattering, rising fever…he said his skin felt weird, he didn’t feel good. I checked for pressure sores or anything obvious that might be hurting him, but I found nothing. And then all the questions flooded my mind. How long was this going on before I got here? Do I call 911? Do I call his parents and ask their advice? Do I wait it out and pray is passes like it has before? Is it something minor? Or something major that requires immediate attention? Does he have some kind of infection like the time he had a kidney infection? Or is it something that will clear on its own?

So many unknowns spinning round. I knew what appeared to be autonomic dysreflexia wasn’t something to ignore—all those symptoms were my husband’s body shouting, “something’s wrong, pay attention!” But what was wrong? I didn’t want to overreact, and I also didn’t want to underreact.

People like my husband with a spinal cord injury at a certain level can experience autonomic dysreflexia because they don’t have feeling in their bodies below a certain level. When something below my husband’s injury level is irritated, he can experience a variety of symptoms as his body’s way of cuing that something is wrong. And because this can affect blood pressure and heart rate levels, it’s important to get it under control to avoid further complications.

Testing in the ER revealed an irritated colon and it was decided that it was best to keep my husband in the hospital for monitoring to make sure he didn’t get worse.  So then came a lot of waiting, nurses and doctors coming in every hour or two to check on my husband, and not much sleep.

Deep down I knew he’d be okay and we’d get through this bump in road just like we had gotten through challenges before, and by the next day he was released to go home. But it was also like this flashing reminder in my face that the details of today, tomorrow, a year from now…they’re unknown to me.

And sometimes that scares me.

What happens if something worse happens to Vince than the daily challenges he already endures? What would that mean for our family? Our boys?

Sometimes as Christ followers we’re quick to say just don’t worry, don’t fear, don’t be anxious. But if we’re honest, we internally wrestle with mixed feelings in life because we live post-Eden. Burdens God never desired for us to bear are our daily realities.

Injured bodies navigating life on wheels, weary souls battling cancer, children in hospital beds rather than enjoying fresh air at the park, families watching loved ones breathe their last days on earth…

Are we just supposed to deny the heartache, wipe the tears and move on, stuff down the insecurities, act like the unknowns don’t bother us?

Or maybe there’s a better way—a more honest and holy response. Like how the Psalmist cried out to God from the depths of his heart sometimes in a pit of despair, yet he found his way back to praising God. Or like how Paul lived with a “thorn in the flesh” and pleaded with the Lord three times to take it and though God’s answer was no, he still learned to live content and rejoice in his sufferings. Or like how even Jesus—Perfect Jesus—cried out to God wondering why His own Father had forsaken Him…yet He willingly submitted to death.

God can handle our honest feelings. We can wrestle. We can question. And we can surrender every insecurity and fear into the Hands of the One who is not surprised by the storms.

Though the details of life might be uncertain to us, they aren’t to Him. And peace comes when we learn to trust Him with the details rather than getting trapped by the what-ifs.

You will keep in perfect peace
those whose minds are steadfast,
because they trust in you.
Trust in the Lord forever,
for the Lord, the Lord himself, is the Rock eternal.

~ Isaiah 26:3-4

Our circumstances may shake the ground beneath our feet, but we can stand confidently on His unwavering promises. He will make a way. He will be with us. He will weave every strand together for good. He will one day wipe away every teardrop. He will make beauty from ashes. He will restore and rebuild and redeem.  If we are in Christ, we have a beautiful eternal inheritance that can’t be stolen by the hardest earthly days.

But when those hard times come, He shows up reminding us that He’s with us and working on our behalf. And He sends helpers like He did as I waited in the hospital with my husband, making the burden not so heavy. Family dropping their schedules to help us out and care for our boys. An outpouring of messages, texts, prayers—all extensions of love reminding us we weren’t alone. People bringing food and meals and checking in to see if we needed anything. Blessing after blessing in the midst of the hard, people carrying the burden, the body of Christ being the body of Christ.

Life can be full of uncertainties, but we have a trustworthy God who provides just what we need.