God Gives Us Practice Rounds
You would never throw your child into the deep end of the pool without first teaching her to swim. Neither will God.
"My brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of any kind, consider it nothing but joy." (Jas 1:2)
When I share my story, listeners sometimes say they couldn’t possibly have stayed strong through a similar ordeal.
Yes, you would.
How do I know? Because I know that God is simply too good a Father to throw you into a situation for which He has not adequately prepared you.
Whatever crosses He has prepared for your future, He is using the crosses of today, or those of yesterday, to prepare you.
You don’t throw your child into the deep end without first teaching them to swim. You don’t ask your body to run a marathon without first running countless shorter runs. God won’t ask you to lift a 100-pound cross without first laying a few 50-pounders on you.
As an example, here’s the story of a cross God allowed in my life, when my water broke when I was 30 weeks pregnant with our third child. I learned:
The power of prayer. The doctor assured us our baby would almost certainly be born within 24 hours of my water breaking, and they warned us of the dangers he faced: respiratory issues, vision problems, potential bleeding in the brain, to name just a few. With an army of prayer warriors behind us, we made it through those first 24 hours, then the second 24 hours and, in fact three weeks. Finally, at 33 weeks, the doctor said our son was out of the woods and not likely to suffer any serious consequences from premature birth. I gave God the prayerful “go ahead” and went into labor a few hours later.
How to pray. I was an infant in the Faith and had a long way to go in my life of prayer. With so little to do while laying in a hospital bed for those three weeks, I entered far more deeply into prayer than I had been able to previously. I read scripture, journaled, and in every way. I began to pray the Rosary in earnest, and fell in love with its meditative quality as I grew to more fully recognize its usefulness in drawing us toward Christ.
The gift of turning lemons into lemonade. It’s not often that young moms get three weeks of quiet and solitude. This may not have been my preferred method to get it, but I now jokingly call my time at Methodist Hospital my stay in the “Methodist Riviera.” Never since have I had so much time on my hands to read, pray, and ponder the vicissitudes of life. Next time, I do hope it will be on the beach or at a quiet cabin in the woods.
Gratitude for what we have. By the grace of God, my hospital room was once the staff break room. It was twice the size of any other room on the unit, more of a studio apartment than a hospital room. I visited another mom, also on bedrest, whose tiny room offered a single that was not even visible from the main room. I, on the other hand, I enjoyed an expansive vista of Indy from the comfort of my bed.
Family is awesome. Or, at least, mine is. My parents had just arrived in Florida after an 18-hour drive when they got the call that I was at the hospital. They went to church and breakfast with the friends they were meeting down there, turned around, and drove the 18 hours right back home. In the weeks that followed, my mom brought the kids for a visit at least every other day. My dad, whose love language is food, brought me a culinary treat every single day. Lattes from the lobby coffee shop, homemade cookies, homemade stewed apples, biscuits and gravy from the restaurant on the corner, just to name a few. Needless to say, the nurses loved him, too. He found a mini-fridge and hauled that up to my suite. And, since that cold food needed to be warmed, he brought a microwave to boot.
Cheesecake with extra strawberries on top is not really the best way to get your daily allowance of fruit. Seriously. Eat all the food my dad brought, order cheesecake twice a day because that was the only fruit on the menu, lay in bed 24/7, and you know what’s going to happen.
Here’s a quick look at those lessons, applied to the heavier cross of my husband’s heart attack and subsequent brain injury:
The power of prayer. If you read this previous post, you know that prayer played a tremendous role in the early days of my husband’s recovery.
How to pray (in particular, the Rosary): The act of placing my needs in the hands of Our Lady while I place my focus, not on our problems, but on the life of Christ, has dramatically eased the pain, heart break, anxiety, and grief of these past ten years.
Turn lemons into lemonade. So many things, and here’s just one: I told my children the fateful morning of the heart attack, “I don’t know what’s wrong with Daddy, but I do know this: you have a Father in Heaven who loves you very much. He will always take care of you.” Time and again, we’ve witnessed the Truth of those words. That’s some sweet, sweet lemonade.
My family is awesome. Present tense. 100%. They’ve been there for us through it all.
Cheesecake and strawberries. Still applies. And, hey, I’ve recently lost 25 pounds and feel great!
Whatever you’re going through, take heart. God has given you everything you need to endure, and He will use this experience to strengthen you for your future needs. Just don’t eat the cheesecake.
In case you’re wondering:
Our son defied the odds and was born 3 weeks after my water broke. While he weighed in at 4’12” (nearly a full-size baby by my standards), his first few years of life were not without their challenges, including seven weeks in the NICU, nine months with a feeding tube, and many years of occupational, physical, and speech therapy. Today, he is a strapping young man of 17 who loves to mountain bike and workout at the gym. God is good.
“We also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.” (Romans 5:3-5)