Step by Step

There is a story in 1 Kings 13 about a prophet who hears the word of God, follows it, and then on his way home, allows himself to be tricked into believing that what he initially heard from God was false.  He succumbs to the deception and dies from it.  It’s such an odd story and has stayed with me this week as I’ve thought about what it might mean and why God allowed him to be tricked in such a way.  The verse that keeps coming to mind in relation to it is James 1:3 “For the testing of your faith produces perseverance.”  I keep thinking that when the prophet’s faith was tested he did not persevere.  If he had, I wonder what he might have been able to accomplish for the Lord – what bigger plans might God have had in store for him if he had allowed himself to grow strong in the face of testing.

The past two months have been a time of testing for me, so perhaps this story is hitting extra hard for that reason.  Moving has been a great test of my faith, and then, three weeks ago, Joshua started running a fever. 

The fever eventually earned us an ambulance ride (at our pediatrician's insistence) to a children’s hospital in Charlotte and that earned us a 12 night hospital stay, a horrifying case of pneumonia, a collapsed lung, and a surgery.  The sheer terror and exhaustion and absolute anguish to see my  21 month old hooked up to monitors and fighting high fevers would have been enough testing but to walk through this struggle with him in a town where we know almost no one – where I had to use the GPS to even get back and forth to the hospital – was almost unbearable.  It felt like the absolute form of testing to try to cling to the Lord when thoughts of “If only we were still in Winston” tried hard to push in on me.  Trying to coordinate care for my older kids without the community I had in Winston required me to humble myself and accept help that I would otherwise have not accepted. It also required me to open up to people who were virtually strangers and accept prayer and hugs and compassion – to find those in unexpected places.

We are home with Joshua now, and he is not the same.  He isn’t walking and barely crawling.  He is so far from the chubby, rambunctious boy he was when this started, and I still have a pit in my stomach about whether he is truly “ok.”  We have countless follow up appointments with specialists scheduled, and it has been made clear to us that a common cold could be a very big deal for him right now.  Not only does his compromised health scare the daylights out of me, but it also means that we will be secluded from social situations for the forseeable future.  I won’t be able to go to the gym or take the kids to anything where there are other children – which makes organizing playdates with new friends impossible.  We also are not able to go to church together as a family while he recovers.  Christmas with my family was cancelled due to the sheer amount of young children and potential for sickness, which is hard enough on its own, but I have not celebrated Christmas on Christmas Day with my family since Daniel was 20 months old. 

If I allow myself to sit in these fears and heartaches, I can get lost in them.  But unlike the prophet in 1 Kings, I know that the testing of my faith develops perseverance, and I want to persevere through this.  I want to catch what God is trying to build in me through this situation.

One night after trading places with Andy at the hospital, I drove home and prayed to the Lord.  What I heard back was God telling me that I needed my will to be broken and conformed to his and that I needed to learn to trust him with each step of the process – not trust him while holding on to knowledge of the future.  You see, if someone had told me that Joshua would be out of the hospital in two weeks, I wouldn’t have had to trust God with the day by day.  I would’ve looked toward the end point instead.  When we were admitted to the hospital, no one would make projections about when we might go home.  Joshua’s pneumonia was too bad for that, and as different complications creeped in, we quickly learned that his road toward healing was a day by day, sometimes hour by hour, dance of going a bit forward and then a bit backward.  Going home became much less of a concern and having our boy be ok became immensely more important.  Focusing on the future was too scary.  I found myself more than once saying to Andy, “He is ok right now.  Let’s just hold on to that.”

As I prepare for the first of our follow up appointments today, I find myself again remembering that for now, God has me focusing on taking care of Joshua today.  That means greatly limiting time in public and with other people and asking all the questions of my doctor that will give me the information and skills needed to keep him on the road to recovery.  This is the task I’ve been given today.  I’ve also been given the task of being in Charlotte for today.  We may not be here forever, but God isn’t telling me the end point – just as the doctors did not tell me the end point when Joshua was admitted to the hospital.  I’m learning that the destination is not important.  Trusting God with each step is how our faith grows and when the steps are steep and rough under our feet, we can believe that God is developing in us perseverance that will not let us down. 

Unlike the deceived prophet in 1 Kings, I refuse to turn around or be tricked into believing that God has not shown himself to me.  He has, and he will continue to go before us, even if I don’t see the path where we are walking.  I can trust that he knows and that in his leading, I can find full confidence.