Yesterday afternoon, we were called to the hospital. A close family friend–26 years old with a three-month-old baby–was admitted for emergency open-heart surgery. When the “stomach flu” she had been suffering from for three days kept getting worse, her mother finally took her to the ER. Turns out she had an aortic aneurysm the size of a grapefruit, a deformed valve, and an aortic dissection. She should have been dead, but something was keeping her alive. According to the surgeon, something had been keeping her alive for months, something he couldn’t explain in medical terms.
All of us in the hospital waiting room at that moment believe in miracles. We believe she’s still alive because of God’s hand in her life, or, more accurately, because her life is in God’s hands. I truly believe in that, just as much as I believed it about my younger brother’s life when he passed away seven years ago from a brain tumor. It’s important that you know about my brother, because sometimes God’s will leads to miracles and sometimes it doesn’t. I could cite many other examples from my own life and the lives of others that attest that outcomes are not the point of faith.
Which leads me to the title of today’s post. We sat in the waiting room last night waiting for the surgery to be completed, thinking about the possibility that she might die on the table, knowing that even if the surgery was successful, she still might die in the days following the surgery. It brought fears to the surface that are too big to confront. Fears of death. Fears of incomprehensible loss. Fears of a child growing up without his mother. Fears of a mother losing her child. I experienced those kind of fears when my brother died, and I still don’t comprehend them.
I fundamentally believe that “God hath not given us a spirit of fear,” but I also know from experience that fear is part of the journey. For me at this time, it is the fear of what happens when both my parents are gone and I am on my own in a new way. What happens as I grow old myself without children or spouse to help share the burden. Fear that I will never know the sweetness of being someone’s other half and having them be mine.
I also believe that we don’t gain anything by pretending we are not afraid. Courage and faith require confronting fear–even when it’s this big–and sitting with it when you can’t do anything of yourself to make it go away. It is the tiger in the cage and sometimes we have to climb inside that cage and face the tiger to learn who we really are.
I don’t have all the answers about how to deal with fear. I know that I have experienced a peace beyond understanding in the face of great fears–but only when I have stopped pretending, admitted that I was afraid, and sought help beyond my own ability. I believe that divine help is real, even if sometimes all that help does is allow you to face circumstances you can’t change, without being pulled apart by them. That’s a much bigger help than I sometimes give the Lord credit for.
My friend survived her surgery, and her outlook is strong at this point. She may be able to leave the hospital as soon as the end of the week. She has received a miracle, and I join her family in giving profound gratitude for the preservation of her life. I also give profound gratitude for what I have learned about myself and my God from those times when my worst fears were realized, when there was no divine intervention to keep the worst from happening. Because sometimes the worst is exactly what is supposed to happen. As I said earlier, outcomes are not the point of faith.
singledaughterofgod 