What To Do When God is Rewriting Your Story

Sometimes it’s hard to write about what’s going on in your heart and life while it’s happening. A testimony is easier to share when you can give it an ending that makes everyone say, “Amen!” Recently, though, God has been teaching me that life isn’t always about resolutions. Sometimes He teaches us the most when it seems like every detail of our lives is “in-process.”
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Early in October, my husband and I learned that we are expecting our first baby. I think I experienced a mild shock. It took four tests and a doctor’s appointment to convince me that I was, in fact, pregnant.

Over the past few years, I’ve gone from terrified at the very idea of having kids to a great desire to have children. On October 1, my 29th birthday, I even wished that this year would be the year. 

At that time, I was expecting pregnancy to be something we’d have to wait patiently on God for. Little did I know, as I made that wish over my birthday cake, a little baby was already growing inside me. 
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When my doctor confirmed that we were expecting, I knew that somewhere inside my heart I was excited, but I couldn’t feel it yet. That first week I just felt numb—almost a sort of denial. Suddenly, something I’d prayed for had become a reality much faster than expected, and I was terrified.

As the days passed, I slowly began to feel small stirrings of excitement and little bouts of curiosity about whether the baby would be a girl or boy, if it would look like Daniel or if it would look like me, and what its personality would be like.

Then, over the next few days, a progression of unwanted things happened rapidly:

1. Morning sickness and exhaustion hit me harder than any sickness has in my life. I lost all desire to do anything besides sleep, and I felt like a zombie at the office. I didn’t want to eat, I couldn’t keep my vitamins down, and I felt like a horrible mother already.
2. My sister and brother-in-law’s dog got hit by a car, and I had to say goodbye to his broken body as he wagged his tail and looked at me with sorrowful eyes.
3. Finally, and most devastatingly, my Mom called my sisters and me to tell us, against all of our hopes to the contrary, she had cancer.

When you add all of those things together and throw pregnancy hormones into the mix, I think you can begin to paint a picture of exactly how much of a mess I was. Even as I write these things down, I’m bawling like a baby and wondering why I bothered with mascara today.

I’ve never handled loss well and dealing with the reality of losing a beloved pet—seeing first-hand how hard even that was for me to deal with—magnified my fear of losing my Mom and escalated my fears of losing my baby as well.

I didn’t know how to deal with all of those emotions when I could barely stay awake or keep any food down, so, frankly, I didn’t deal with them. I shut down. For about a month, I went to work, where I pretended to be fine, and I went home, where I slept.

But God, in His mercy, began to wake me up again. Daniel and I went to our first ultrasound and seeing the baby moving and hearing its heartbeat reminded me of God’s miraculous power. Life is God’s miracle, after all, and He is in control of each heartbeat. He reminded me that my baby’s and my Mom’s heartbeats are all under His control.

Loss and illness are not only heartbreaking, but they are also very humbling. I have no control over the life and death of my loved ones, and struggling with my Mom’s diagnosis has brought that knowledge to the forefront of my mind.

One thing that has kept drawing my heart back to trusting God through this uncertain time is my Mom’s unfailing faith and joy. Even when she told us about her diagnosis, she couldn’t stop praising God for His goodness in working out the details of her appointments. Her sweet, trusting testimony has filled me with a new appreciation for her and for my God.

My Mom’s diagnosis created a storm of fear in my heart, but I was recently reminded of Jesus’ words to his disciples when their ship was tossed by a horrible storm:

“But straightway Jesus spake unto them, saying, Be of good cheer; it is I; be not afraid.” Matt 14:27

And really, those words should carry over the tempests in all of our lives. There is no storm, physical, emotional, or mental, that Jesus is not present for and through which He is not in control.

• My Mom can be joyful
  because Jesus is with her in her storm.
• My Mom can be thankful
  because Jesus is with her in her storm.
• My Mom can be unafraid
  ​because Jesus is with her in her storm.

My fear and doubt don’t change the fact that Jesus is in control of the wind and waves rocking our lives right now, it just makes me more miserable. He is always there, offering peace, security, and cheer. I know in my heart that I will have to repent of my fear and choose to accept these blessings more than once in the coming months.

As the new year approaches, I know that I will continue to face a lot of unknowns. I can’t see the outcome of my Mom’s treatments or the birth of a healthy baby into our family. But the one thing I know for sure is that Jesus is with us, and He is in control.

Cary Schmidt, in his book Off Script, which tells of his own battle with cancer, puts it this way:

“The diagnosis and the present treatments have descended upon my life, family, and ministry like an unexpected winter storm. In the storm, I wrestle with things beyond my control […]. I wrestle with knowing there is no guarantee of outcomes—no certainty of healing, no promise of remission, no assurance that cancer will never return […].

Inside, safe from the storm, near the warmth of the fire, I do not wrestle. I rest. In God’s presence, with the warmth of His grace and the strength of His embrace, there is no wrestling. The uncertainty remains. The elements remain. Circumstances beyond my control continue. The questions remain unanswered. The trial remains unabated. The future remains uncertain and gray. But near the heart of God, everything is different.

It is His sovereignty that makes the difference.

The storm is in His hand. The flakes fall from His fingers. The cold comes from His control. The struggle streams from His sovereign plan. And He is good.”

He is good.

​Knowing that my God is good, that He is sovereign, and that He is with me gives me the strength to cry, to pray, to trust, and to smile instead of allowing fear to consume me.
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Maybe in a few months, I’ll be able to tell a happy ending of a healthy baby and a cancer-free Mom. Maybe. Whatever happens though, I do not have to fear the storms, because I know that it is Jesus who commands the winds, and He is good.

"Hindsight is 20/20" they say. If God has rewritten your story, we'd like to hear what you learned in the rewriting and how it helped to grow your faith.

You may also be interested in 12 Letters I Wrote to a Friend With Cancer.