What If It Happens Again?
Holding on to Faith in Uncertainty
I peed on a stick and saw two lines.
And I almost passed out.
I called my husband. Hyperventilating.
We had a six-year-old. Our almost two-year-old was medically complex.
I took the test on a whim. Just in case.
Two lines.
Panic.
This wasn’t a cute social media moment or a Pinterest-worthy reveal. This was sweat-on-my-palms, heart-in-my-throat, “Jesus, I can’t do this again.”
This wasn’t a fear rooted in logistical concerns, although that would have been valid. We were about to start homeschooling our oldest, and our terminally ill daughter was constantly in and out of hospital stays and doctors’ appointments.
This fear ran deeper. Just a week and a half before, we finally got a diagnosis. Our genetic specialists called to tell us that our daughter’s illness finally had a name. And every child we had would have a 25% chance of inheriting the same terminal condition.
When my husband came home, I collapsed in his arms, sobbing, saying “What if it happens again?! What if it happens again?!”
That man held my face in his hands, wiped my tears and said, “Baby…what if it doesn’t? There’s a 75% chance everything is okay.”
I nodded, took a deep breath, and said, “ok…I hear you. But what if it does?”
And he said, “then we will do it all over again. that will be really hard. But we will love this baby just as we have our other two. We will do it all over again.”
I’ll never forget that moment. It was an anchoring moment in our marriage. I felt safe in that moment, not because the path forward was certain, but because I had a spouse standing next to me committed to trusting that even if our worst fears were actualized, we would keep moving. We would keep trusting. We would stand together. And we would hold on to faith that God is good through all of it.
I don’t say any of that lightly. It’s easy to say that we will hold on to faith when things get tough. It’s much harder to actually live it.
We don’t like pain.
But more than that…we don’t like unpredictable pain.
We want a warning. We want a manual. We want instructions: “If this, then this, and if that, then that.”
We want a fail-proof timeline.
We think, “If I can just see it coming, I can brace myself. THEN, I can hope for the best in the process.”
But that’s not how life works, is it?
And here’s the truth we try so hard to avoid:
We don’t have to wonder if pain is coming. It is. Pain is part of our human experience. We live in a world that’s broken, painful, and imperfect. One day, we’ll live in heavenly perfection, but we’re not there (yet).
So maybe the real question isn’t “what if pain comes around again?”
It’s, “What will I choose to believe when it does?”
“I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”
John 16:33 NIV
Jesus didn’t promise a pain-free path. He promised His presence in it. The Holy Spirit’s guidance through it. God’s provision in spite of it.
He said, you WILL have trouble and guess what?
I will leave pain DEFEATED.
I will leave death DEFEATED.
I will leave sorrow DEFEATED,
but I will never leave you DEFEATED.
Those 5 long months between finding out I was pregnant and finally discovering that our youngest child was, indeed, going to be completely physically healthy were some of the longest months of waiting I had ever experienced. And through each one of them I kept praying, “God even if we are walking this road a second time, remind me of your goodness anyway. Remind me of your faithfulness. Comfort me. Because even if we are walking this again I know you don’t leave us feeling forgotten.”
What if it happens again?
What if we feel that pain again?
What if we live that nightmare again?
What if you lose that job again?
What if our prayers aren’t answered again?
Then we’ll walk through it again.
Why?
Because the God who walked through the valley with us before will walk with us through it again.
Because even though He is not the author of all of the suffering we might experience in this world, He always meets us in it. He carries us through. He redeems.
Your job? It’s not to muster up strength from the depths of your tired soul.
Your job is to crash into the arms of the One who created you and allow Him to hold you through the blessings and the burdens.
Pain is not evidence that God is absent. It’s an opportunity to be held.
It is an opportunity for us to witness His unrelenting grace and mercy. It’s an opportunity to let Him meet us in tenderness and our most vulnerable places.
“What if it happens again?”
It could. It might. I’m not here to sell you on certainty of outcomes or circumstances.
I’m here to point you back to a truth so certain that we have a text that has persisted thousands of years telling it in thousands of different languages: God sees you. He hears you. And He says, “You are mine.”
We don’t hope because we’re naive.
We hope because the empty tomb said that even death didn’t get the final word.
We don’t have to pretend that everything will be fine.
We have hope because we know that even if it’s not, God is good anyway, and He will always be enough.
Heavenly Father,
For the person reading this right now in a period of waiting, for the person in a valley, for the person feeling like you are absent, draw them near to You. Surround them with Your loving arms and remind them that no matter the circumstances, You are good, You are faithful, and You will carry them through.
In Jesus’ name,
Amen.
I'm facing this as we anticipate discharge from NICU in the very near future...but this isn't the first time we've been here, but rather the third or fourth, and each time something happens to prevent it or push it out. I just want my baby home with me - praying that this time it will finally happen. It's been a long six months...