On April 6, 2014 a month before we were to find out that the baby I’m carrying has a condition that will not allow her to live once born I read the following from my devotional 90 Days of God’s Goodness by Randy Alcorn:
“But He said to me my grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” – 2 Corinthians 12:9
David Guthrie, reflecting on the death of his disabled daughter, told me. “I spent my life waiting for the other shoe to drop. The shoe has dropped. I had thought I was invulnerable. Now I know better. I thought, our child has died. How much worse can it get? There’s less to fear. God will be enough for us. Now we say it out of experience.”
I immediately wept as I read that because I was living in fear of the next shoe dropping. Ever since Sophie passed away my fear has been “Lord, who will you take next? What’s the next thing to drop in my life?” I wept because I didn’t have that same confidence that David Guthrie spoke of. My view of God had been shaken and I was looking to the fears of the future instead of living in the reality that His grace is SUFFICIENT for me in whatever He’s asking me to walk through now, not later. I was forgetting how God was enough for us as we walked through the life and death of our daughter Sophie, and I could take to the bank that He would be enough for us in whatever He asked us to walk through next. I wrote the following to the Lord in response to what He was putting on my heart that day.
“Lord, I needed this reminder today… PERSPECTIVE as I have fears of what ‘shoe will drop next’? But the biggest shoe I could ever imagine dropping has dropped. And we’ve survived because YOU have held us and been enough. So I know, it’s true, whatever shoe may drop next you will be enough then. I couldn’t have imagined walking through this last year if you had told me beforehand what would happen and YET, when you asked us to walk through this season, you entered in and walked it with us. So I CAN trust and not fear that whatever you ask us to walk through next you will walk with us in it. I’m trying to imagine what awful things it may be, out of fear and I don’t have the strength to face any of that today because you haven’t asked me to. Lord, today… this new baby is alive as far as we know and I just want to trust you with their life, to be hopeful that we may meet this child and watch him/her grow up. And if you ask us to walk through something different then I can trust you with that too! For ‘Your grace IS sufficient for power is perfected in weakness.”
Throughout the next month, I lived less in fear of what God would allow next, but in peace and hope in WHO He is and WHO He would be in whatever He allowed next. And while the fear was not stripped away, I began to wrestle with and understand God’s love and goodness to me in much deeper ways that began to lessen in me the fears of what may or may not come. I don’t know about you but I can often be paralyzed with fear instead of reminded of God’s goodness and faithfulness to me in the midst of the things that He’s asked me to walk through. And now, here we are, the shoe has dropped a second time, and while we are sad beyond belief, we are hopeful. We are hopeful that as we look to how God walked with us through our time with Sophie, so He will with this little baby. How can we even have an ounce of hope right now unless God has supernaturally intervened in our hearts and produced that in us? What evidence of His love and goodness to us! So if you live in fear of when the next shoe will drop in your life, oh my friend, please remember the ways that God has met you in other seasons of darkness and of joy for “Jesus Christ is the same, yesterday, today and forever.” (Hebrews 13:5) And His grace IS sufficient for you today.
- A Time to be Silent and a Time to Speak - October 29, 2020
- Teaching Them to Hope, Birthday After Birthday. - January 15, 2020
- A Taste of Hope Fulfilled – Briella Dawn’s Birth Story - August 3, 2018
