"To my family:
I’m not sure why it seems like the Lord gives us hope, leads us in one direction, and then suddenly takes that hope away from us. I don’t know and I don’t have the answers. The truth is I am scared and I am incredibly heartbroken just like you. It completely shatters my heart to think of what could happen - a world without our mom, our kids without their Gammy. We feel like we should be doing something, but we don’t know what to do. There is nothing we ourselves can do to heal our mom from this terrible disease.
The question many are asking (including myself) is, “If there is a God that loves us, and He loves my mom and my mom loves Him, then why is He letting this happen to her?” Certainly God has the power to heal our mom and we all are praying that in Jesus name He does so. However, His ways are not our ways and His plans are not our plans (Isaiah 55:8). This sounds a bit brash, but that’s where “Trust” with a capital “T” comes into the picture.
As Christians, we talk all the time about having faith and trusting God.
“Just trust in God.”
“Have faith, brother!”
“I have faith.”
“I’m trusting God, sister.”
“I trust that God will work this all out.”
Yet, when all that fluffy surface trust talk gets scraped away and we find ourselves face to face with an impossible situation, of which we have no control over, that’s when we discover what we truly believe. When all other solutions and possibilities are taken from us, and it seems all hope is gone, that’s when we need the real Trust.
Have we learned nothing about Faith and Trust? The impossible situation that we all faced 10 years ago surely has a lesson in Faith for all of us. Who is this God that we have been raised to know? Who is the God that we chose to believe in and follow? Has this God not been faithful? Has this God not been trustworthy? Has this God not been able to make the impossible possible? Mom and dad have spent our entire lives teaching and showing us how to have Faith and Trust in the Lord our God. Now the time has come for us to do so.
Maybe we think this situation is somehow different or, maybe, this time God won’t show up. How did Trusting God work out before? We need to remember what happened 10 years ago and remember what our parents taught and have shown us to be true. No, it’s not easy. Nobody said having Faith and Trusting God would be easy.
Even until now, I’ve put my trust in man and in modern day medicine. I’ve neglected to put my Trust in the One and only person that matters, the One who can take this disease from mom. We need to Believe that God our father loves us and knows what we need before we even ask him (Matthew 6:8). We need to Trust that God, despite what He choses to do, loves us and has a purpose for each of us.
What is Trust? Trust, as I know it, is completely putting yourself into God’s hands while having no control whatsoever. There’s a reason we Janssen’s don’t like flying in airplanes - we don’t like being taken up into the sky with no control of what happens to us. We, and every passenger on that plane, is at the mercy of that pilot. What that pilot decides to do or where he decides to take that plane is, in the end, entirely up to him. Yet, that pilot does know exactly where he’s taking that plane and he does have a plan. This is the same fear we have with Trusting God. We have no control of the situation and we are at the mercy of what He decides to do and where He decides to take us. Yet, our Faith and Trust is that He will safely take us to where He wants us.
When we were little kids, and dad told us something, we believed him and we trusted him. We took what he said as complete truth. We may not have always liked what he had to say, but we knew that what he said was true. God our Father’s words are Truth. He does not lie. He does not cheat. He is the same God today that He was in the beginning of time (Hebrews 13:8).
These things I know to be true: God loves us and God loves our mom (John 3:16, 1 John 4:16), He has plans for each one of us (Jeremiah 29:11, Ecclesiastes 6:10), His ways are better than our ways (Isaiah 55:8) and we are to give thanks [to God] in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for us in Christ Jesus (1 Thessalonians 5:18)."
Originally published to Facebook on 7.20.16
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