Trusting in the dark

"Do not be discouraged by the fact that many of your prayers are yet unanswered. Time is a trainer, teaching you to wait upon Me, to trust Me in the dark."  (From the devotional Jesus Calling, by Sarah Young.)

 

Trust Me in the dark. 

The dark.  Trust God when I can't see.  When I can't know.  When I can't understand and it's not clear or settled.  If there is no darkness, there is no place or need for me to trust God in the first place.  And I thought that's what I've been doing for the last month.  Ever since we got this call about North Dakota and the new job, our lives have been turned upside down.  But maybe that was just the beginning.  The preparation for more.

Because how quickly things can change in one day's time.  One moment you have plans and dreams  all specifically laid out, and then life happens and all of these carefully orchestrated moments you are counting on suddenly flutter away as easily as dandelion wishes. 

I got some bad blood pressure news on Thursday afternoon when I went to see the doctor.  The same day Todd drove back up to North Dakota to continue with work.  I went from having a plan about what the next few weeks were going to look like, to packing up my box of things at the office and making notes for my replacement.  I've been at home resting ever since.  On Monday morning I go back to the doctor - if my blood pressure is still high, I'll be admitted to the hospital to be monitored for 24 hours.  And depending on how that plays out, Jacob could be born next week.

My doctor looked me in the eye and told me to come with my bag packed.  He is expecting to admit me.

Not exactly what I was planning or hoping for.  And definitely not how I wanted any of this to go.

Trust Me in the dark, He says again.

To say that I'm a bit overwhelmed and scared would be an understatement.  In the last day and a half I've been forced to slow down in the ways I've been resisting to for weeks.  I've been faced with some of the very things I've feared would happen - another round of preeclampsia, a baby born early, Todd missing Jacob's birth, my Robin not being back from vacation in time to be in the c-section room with me, our finances and Todd's new job not being in order....and on and on and on.  I have felt forgotten by God and wondering what trusting Him is supposed to look like when I only feel deserted.

It seems that it's when we are in the dark though, the very place I have felt deserted and forgotten by Him, is the very place He stands and waits.  That is the place He is inviting me to trust Him with my heart.  Not when I can see or know or be assured that everything is going to work out, but when I don't know that it will. 

So here I am in these places that feel HUGE, where I am being asked to trust a God that I've never been able to see, but have always known was there.  I've experienced Him and His love and presence in my life - I'm changed because of it.  But trust.  Trust is different.  It's always been hard to trust Him with anything really because I only want to trust God if only good things happen to me. And that's not how He allows for life to unfold for me - or anyone for that matter.

Trust Him with the outcome.  Trust Him with who is or who isn't there at the time of Jacob's birth.  Trust Him with my body and what the last few weeks of pregnancy seem to do it.  Trust Him with our finances and Todd's job and having no control over any of it because I'm done working a whole week earlier than I had planned.   Trust Him with all of it.  Can I do that?  And what does that look like?

For the moment, I don't really know - maybe because I've never trusted God that way before. 

But I have tried to take all of this moment by moment.  I've thanked Him for the rest that He has provided me.  I've asked for prayer and for help.  I've had friends run errands and asked people to come over and just be with me so I don't feel so alone since I'm bound to the house.  I've accepted that whatever happens on Monday will happen - I can't control it.  Other than resting like my doctor told me to, there isn't much I can do to control how life and blood pressure and circumstances will play out. 

Is this trust?

I've looked back on my history with God and where He has shown up.  How I made it through my first son's birth and a NICU stay and preeclampsia and how all of that came to an end and life was lived in it and after it.  How we've always been able to pay our bills and have what we need even if it was tight.  In the heat of overwhelming circumstances I've always been easily convinced that God isn't there or that He has somehow stopped caring.  But really, He was there and was in it even if I couldn't see Him.  And if that's true, what is also true is that He is here in all of this too. 

I'm in the dark.  I can't see. 

But He isn't.  He isn't in the dark, and He does see.  And for now, that is where I am resting.