Deep Shadows and Golden Light

The autumn sun drops swiftly through the naked trees and the golden light spills into our living room cutting shadows in the gold pooling on the floor. The day is stretching out, ready to tuck itself into the night as I hear the tick-tock of the clock -- another indication the day is almost done. Sitting in the silence in the golden pockets of light, the metal click of my heart valve ticks faster than the clock above my head.

That heart valve that Dr David put in six years ago, that was supposed to let my heart keep on pumping blood for decades, is tragically closing in with scar tissue. That’s what doctors believe is happening without actually cutting into my chest and handling my heart once again. No one can tell how long it will take before the tissue growth will make the hole so small it will be impossible for my heart to pump blood to get oxygen to the rest of my body. It is casting shadows in my life and it’s reminding me that my time here, well, it could almost be done. I’m collecting days like a string of pearls, every one precious.

I turn the tragedy around in my mind like I try to patch up pastry that has too many cracks. The more I struggle to fix it, the more it falls apart in my hands. It will never look right. How can I process all the impossible choices ahead? Do I accept a rare complication or choose an irrational intervention? How do I hold it all together and stop the insides from pouring out making a mess of life? How do I dish out a sloppy attempt at living here when there is a glorious banquet already prepared in eternity?

The darkness creeps in and makes me choke. It's an agony that I can't swallow. I don't want the darkness. So I keep looking because I keep learning that in the darkness even the smallest flicker of light radiates hope. It is in the darkness that light shines the brightest. I look for the light. I'm flailing in the darkness. I look to the Light. I don’t know where else to look.

When you read the story of Scripture, when you crack it open right at the beginning, your eyes catch the first thing God created when He spoke into the darkness was light. And it was good. He separated the light from the darkness and “God called the light day, and the darkness he called night.” (Genesis 1:5)

We are in the middle of the story right now. In the middle of the darkness and decay and death and we are all groaning. We are looking and longing for peace, for wholeness. We want all things to be made right. We don’t want hearts to stop and life to be taken too early. We agonize in the shadows. We rejoice in the glorious shining radiance of the Lamb who suffered and silenced death.

When you get to the end of the story, there is a final vision of that which is yet to come. It solves the riddle of life and death, of darkness and light. For all those who have looked to the Light of the world, turned and trusted in the Lamb who was wounded, “they will see his face . . . And night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever.” (Revelation 22:5)

The hands that keep time have given me just over half the years we have come to expect. I don't know how many more I will get to string together. I desperately reach out to grasp more pearls, yet just like the night swallows up the sun every day, it feels like they are slipping through my fingers. I know God has all my days all numbered and one day I will see his face and night will be no more. Until He calls me home, to find my final rest in Him, I will keep looking for the light in this darkness. As I live in Christ, trusting his death was death to all death, the radiance of his glorious shining feeds my hope.

Don't Forget the Things Your Eyes Have Seen

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I was in a foreign land thirty-eight years ago when doctors discovered a sarcoma in me the size of a grapefruit. That is a big tumour for a slip of a girl about to celebrate her third birthday. My dad and grandfather rushed me to the emergency room because I had popped a penny in my mouth and swallowed it and it lodged in my esophagus.

When they scanned for the penny on the x-ray, they found more than they ever imagined. They left me in the hospital that night and carried the bad news back to my mom.

I don’t remember swallowing the penny or spending the night alone in the hospital in England. I don’t remember flying home to Canada or meeting all the doctors that poked and prodded. I don’t remember being admitted to the Hospital for SickKids on that day in September.

I don’t remember the surgery that couldn’t get all the cancer.



I do remember lying very still on a hard, cold table while the doctors blasted me with radiation. I remember months and months of chemotherapy.

No one could say if all the treatment would even kill the cancer; a type of cancer that was so rare to even be found in a child. They drew up a plan for a three year old that was as aggressive as if they were treating an adult with a sarcoma.

My mom, she refused to take me down for my first day of radiation, just weeks after my surgery. I can’t blame her. I’m not sure if I could have subjected any of my three year olds to everything my body has had to endure.

My doctor called her on the phone and told her, if she did not bring me down to Toronto, I would not live. But, she had already been warned of the horrors of all the side effects. How do parents make a heart-wrenching choice like that?

Doomed if you do, but dead if you don’t.

That first appointment was rescheduled. And every weekday for the next five weeks they put me on that cold table in a large room with a big machine killing things I knew nothing about.

I still tremble when I think about that table.

For two years, my fight with cancer continued.

For the next thirty-six years, I have pressed on and I look back lest I forget what my eyes have seen.



No one knew back in 1979 that the radiotherapy they blasted at me as a 3 year old child would send me into advanced heart failure as a 37 year old mom of three young children.

It had already destroyed a lung and so the open-heart surgery I needed was risky business.

How can a body with 30% lung capacity manage on a heart-lung machine for over six hours? No one knew if it could.

Stepping up on to that operating table was a step of faith.

Faith perseveres by seeing “Him who is invisible” we are told in Hebrews 11:27.

My eyes have never seen God. I have never stood before a burning bush or stood at the foot of a mountain and see it burn with fire or heard the voice of God. But, I have seen His wonders; I have seen His glory displayed in my life. I have known the truth He has revealed in His Word.

I will give thanks to God for the great things He has done.



In Deuteronomy, Moses exhorts the children of Israel to not forget what the Lord God has done for them. They are once again on the eastern border of the Promised Land. Moses was forbidden to enter the land and he would die in the land of Moab before God would tell Joshua to cross over the Jordan and take possession of the land He was giving the children of Israel.

They have wandered in the wilderness for 40 years. And now, before Moses dies, he urges the people, with a series of sermons and prophecies, to obey the Lord God who is faithful, unchanging, and full of grace and mercy. God had demonstrated His power and love over and over and yet, it keeps slipping from their mind that He alone is God.

What slips from our mind can never lead to gratitude in our hearts. You forget his wonders, and next you will be forgetting God.



In Deuteronomy 4:9, Moses tells this generation of Israelites: 

“Only take care, and keep your soul diligently, lest you forget the things that your eyes have seen, and lest they depart from your heart all the days of your life. Make them known to your children and your children’s children.”

Don’t forget! Don’t forget what you have seen God do. Don’t let it slip from your memory. Tell it over and over to your children. Don’t give any room for any idols in your heart. God is good and faithful. God is just and holy. He alone is God. Do you know it?



John Calvin, in his commentary on Deuteronomy, wrote:

“the people must beware of shutting their eyes against the clear revelation of God's power, and therefore urges them to keep it in memory, because man's ingratitude is but too prone to forgetfulness."

We don’t know what we may have to face tomorrow.

We don’t know what the road will look like. It may look like the impossible. It may look like cancer or some other sickness, or a costly sacrifice, or persecution, or reproach.

It may look like the Red Sea, or the wilderness, or the Jordan River. It may part and you will step out in faith on the dry ground able to endure because you are relying on God’s promises.



Thirty-eight years ago the doctors found a sarcoma right beside my heart. Three years ago doctors rebuilt my heart, but they didn’t think I would wake up that night after the surgery.

For three years now my heart ticks loud like a clock in my chest. I can hear it keep time with a steady beat as if to remind me every moment of the day.

Before God had created the world, He knew my every heartbeat. He knows my days. By grace, He has brought me back to Himself and with His steadfast love will lead me all the days of my life.

I have seen God do great things. He alone is God. I will not forget.

I will tell them to my children and if it is God’s will, to their children.

Held in the Storm

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It is after the storm passes. When the howling wind that pierced the heart hushes. The surging waves that smashed life to bits become still. And you realize you made it; you lived through it all. You survived. You are still standing.

That is when it hit me. Before the wild storm I thought I had living figured out--until life was almost snuffed out.

I fought and thrashed and floundered. Fought to live for my husband. Fought to live for my children. But when I had fought long and hard enough to keep on living, the frailty of life was too real and I became lost. Lost in the land of the living.

That is when I became afraid to live and scared to suffer anymore.





They say open-heart surgery can send you straight into depression. I fell hard. Into the darkness. Alone. I sunk to a seemingly bottomless pit.

I lost my way.

I lost my words.

I lost the wonder of life.

I became numb. Numb to the very thing I loved to proclaim: the goodness of God.

His grace was blazing like the sunshine splashing gold through the winter branches outside my window, but my eyes focused on the barrenness instead of the Light.

“My hope is built on nothing less

Than Jesus Christ, my righteousness;

I dare not trust the sweetest frame,

But wholly lean on Jesus’ name.”

And, looking away from the shining radiance, I began to sink, like Peter out on the turbulent sea.

Fear held me hostage. Fear does that. It will hold you back and make you withdraw. And you may wonder why God seems so silent.

When Peter stepped out of the boat and fixed his eyes on Jesus he walked on the water. When he saw the wind, he was afraid. When he looked away from the Lord, he tried to flee the danger and ended up withdrawing from the very One who would reach out to help him. And he began to sink.

It is faith that looks to Jesus. Peter had faith. And yes, Jesus reprimanded him for his “little faith”, but not until after He had reached out His hand and took hold of Peter. He held him secure and helped him to trust Him more.

He had already told Peter not to be afraid. He had already told him to: “Take heart, it is I”. He had already bid him to “come”. He had already told him to walk out amidst the storm and trust him. And after Peter falters and flails around in the sea, after Peter looks to the waves and begins to sink, Jesus reaches out his hand and takes hold of Peter and they get back into the boat and the wind ceased.

His anchor held him--through the storm and after the storm.

"When darkness veils His lovely face,

I rest on His unchanging grace;

In every high and stormy gale,

My anchor holds within the veil."

So, when fear grips us and we begin to sink, the Anchor holds us. He has gone before us. He will not let go.

“We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain, where Jesus has gone as a forerunner on our behalf, having become a high priest forever.” (Hebrews 6:20-21)

My eyes looked away. Depression clouded my sight. Fear crept in and all I could think to do was to flee, to withdraw. And I began to sink.

I cried out for help, like Peter floundering in the sea.

And when I looked up away from my troubles and fixed my gaze on Jesus, I knew He never let go. He reached out and He took hold of me. The winds ceased. Life sails on. And, it is not a matter of if God is silent.

He has spoken:

“ . . . in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high . . .” (Hebrews 1:1-3)

The storms, they come. We have been battered and beaten. But, we have been held. He reaches out His hand and takes hold and gently nudges, “O you of little faith, why did you doubt?”

Don’t look to the waves. Look to the One who made the seas and who has power over the waves.

“His oath, His covenant, His blood,

Support me in the whelming flood;

When all around my soul gives way,

He then is all my hope and stay.”

And after the storm you realize, yes, you made it. And through it your faith is strengthened and your joy is sweeter. Fear turns to awe. The glimpse of the glory you saw, you can’t gaze on it, but you look to the King of grace.

The wonder of His sovereign grace opens your eyes to see His goodness, the display of His righteous power stirs words of praise, and the eternal hope found in Him leads you home.

“When He shall come with trumpet sound,

Oh, may I then in Him be found;

In Him, my righteousness, alone,

Faultless to stand before the throne.

On Christ, the solid Rock, I stand;

All other ground is sinking sand.”

Living with Purpose in this World

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I know it like the back of my hand. How life takes on a whole new sharpness when any day could be your last.

You savour the sweet pleasures and the bitter sorrows of life when your days may be short. You stay attentive to living, keenly aware that life is a mere puff of air. You lean into life, pressing in to squeeze every drop of meaning out if it. Suddenly you cannot get enough and you are stuffed to the brim all at the same time.

All week the clouds have poured down rain on the fading flowers. Tulips have dropped their petals and the cherry blossoms have blown away.



As quickly as the thunder rolled in, the sun chased the clouds away and we ran to scan the heavens for rainbows. We saw promises hung in bows across the sky and new life forming in the all small green cherries that have burst forth on the tree in the backyard.

How does one take hold of each day that is strung together to span a lifetime that fades like a passing shadow? Here today, gone tomorrow.

How does one measure one’s life?



Surely life is more than the length of days lived or the dash between two dates.

When you don't know if you will grow old with your beloved or watch your children grow up into adulthood every new sunrise becomes precious. I know about this.

I know it’s hard to live every moment to the fullest. But do we open our eyes wide to every new day we are given while eagerly waiting for our future hope?

Try to hold a shadow in your hand. It is futile. But, cling to hope and hope never disappoints.

The way to measure a life is to know that our ultimate purpose is to glorify God. Our days are numbered but our hope is in the Lord.



C. S. Lewis, in his book, Mere Christianity wrote:

“If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.”

Made for another world. Made to find our rest in God. Made to enjoy God forever.

When dying young is a threat in your day-to-day life, fear can grip you and ensnare you to waste moments and throw away opportunities to really live.



Fear of the known as much as the unknown can keep you from living life to the fullest.

We desire to live abundant lives but our lives are far from full when they are filled with fear.

No one wants to live an empty life. Yet, we let fear tighten its grip on our lives and choke us until we fall silent.

How do we loosen this hold that cages us into living pitiful lives?

When we remember that our days are numbered and our time on earth is brief, that we are simply passing through, life is put into perspective.

But, it is the present hand of the Lord in our lives that releases us from these pointed fingers of fear.

The knowledge that the Lord is near is what allows you to live without worry, fear, and anxiety.

Right before Paul exhorted the Philippians to not be anxious about anything, he reminded them that the Lord is at hand.

“The Lord is at hand; do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” {Philippians 4:5-7}

The way to overcome fear is to be confident that the Lord is near.



Fear subsides when you rest secure in the presence of the Lord.

He is in our midst, a present help, and he is coming to make all things right again.

The promise that He is coming again should make us live every day of our present lives ready for all eternity.

King David knew where his hope came from and it made him ready for his death at any hour. Psalm 39 records his words:

“O LORD, make me know my end
and what is the measure of my days;
let me know how fleeting I am!
Behold, you have made my days a few handbreadths,
and my lifetime is as nothing before you.
Surely all mankind stands as a mere breath! Selah
Surely a man goes about as a shadow!
Surely for nothing they are in turmoil;
man heaps up wealth and does not know who will gather!
“And now, O Lord, for what do I wait?
My hope is in you.”

The promise that the Lord is with us and is coming again empowers us to not be anxious about anything, gives us confidence to come before the throne of grace, and grants us a peace that surpasses all understanding.

C.S. Lewis also wrote these words in Mere Christianity:

“If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were precisely those who thought most of the next . . . It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this.”

Let us ask ourselves: Do we desire to live abundantly while here on this earth? Do we wake every day with the resolve to live effectively in this present world? Have we set our mind on things above and fixed our eyes on things that are eternal?

Know that the Lord is near and you will be freed from fear and filled with the joy and peace of God as your shadow fades and your hope overflows.

Even When Healing Takes Time

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Three years ago my life came to a crashing halt. The heart echocardiogram on that warm May morning showed my cardiologist that my heart was in dreadful shape. His face was grim and his warning was urgent in that small examination room as he stood over me. I looked down at his shiny navy shoes tied with bright cobalt blue laces and choked back tears.

Three months later, despite what he thought possible, I was split right open and a brilliant surgeon patched up my broken heart, held by God’s Sovereign Hand.

They all told me recovery would take time. Time. That’s all they would say. But, time ticks along like an old Grandfather clock that runs slow, when the days are hard and healing is long.

Time, it seems is the antagonist in a story where immediate results would be more sensational. Who wants to put in the hard work of slow improvement when we can gratify our selves by indulging in instant success that will impress?

That first winter after open-heart surgery dragged on cold and harsh. We couldn’t see it, but hope was tucked deep in our souls.

As the writer to the Hebrews said, “Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.”

Spring did come as sure as new seasons always do. That long winter finally gave in to warmer days.

As the spring flowers poked through the ground, I stood helpless as I watched wild rabbits relentlessly chew off all the young tulip shoots. Only a few tulips survived.

Flowers fade. Hearts break. Lives are laid low.



Even when life doesn't turn up the way we plan, our hope is secure in the One who died, was buried and rose again.

So, when the apples were red and ripe on the trees, I bought more bulbs to plant in the front garden. Time ticked on, a little steadier. Some days began to pick up the pace a little. I thought we were too late to put the bulbs into the ground—September had marched past and October refused to stick around despite my longing for more golden days.

It was early November before we had a chance to stir up the soil in the garden as the sun gently beat down on our backs like a warm embrace, and we planted.

The littlest one took hold of the bag of tulip bulbs. Her Daddy grabbed the garden tools and together we buried 50 bulbs in the dirt.







That same night my son, between bites of an apple--his second bedtime snack, recalled, "Mom, you how I said last week that I didn't miss you that much last year when you were in the hospital? Well, I did, but I think I was able to go on because God calmed me. If every day I thought about how you could die, I don't think I could have handled it—I wouldn't have been able to eat, I would have been exhausted. But, God helped me."

I knew what he was saying. Life is hard. Waiting, suffering, healing, yes they are all hard, but there is always hope.



Last week, another warm day in May, three years since my life was turned upside down, I had another echocardiogram to examine how my heart is holding up from the surgery. After I cleaned up all the cold goop used in the ultrasound I sat waiting in another exam room in the cardiac clinic. The resident doctor walked in with my medical file in the crook of her arm, a Starbucks Venti in her hand and bloodshot eyes. She worked in the cardiac clinic after a 26-hour shift because my cardiologist, she said, is a fabulous teacher. She scrolled over the latest results with me, and we compared them with the last few tests before the teacher-doctor joined us.

No change in the last year and the latest three echos is good news. Three years later and my cardiologist stood smiling down at me. He was taken back at how my children, who were hanging out in the waiting room, have all shot up. There has been a lot of growth in three years. I beamed with gratitude and the resident doctor, weary as she was, observed what hope does even when healing takes time.

There is no doubt that dark, uncertain days and hard, heart-breaking circumstances will come. Don't lose heart.







Hold on to Hope. We read in the book of Hebrews that: “ . . . we who have fled to [God] for refuge can have great confidence as we hold to the hope that lies before us. This hope is a strong and trustworthy anchor for our souls.” Jesus has gone before us. He is our hope.

In seasons of waiting, when pain and suffering press in, when time slows and days pass by long and trials are hard, you are never left alone in the darkness.

Hope never fades. And joy, well it is always right there rising out of hard places. Healing may take time, but God, He holds time in His hands. He, “who works all things according to the counsel of his will” is faithful to do just that.

My broken heart is still held together by our only Hope.

And the rabbits still run wild all over our yard. But, for the second spring in a row, fifty bright red tulips stand stunningly in our front garden stretching black faces toward the sky, yielding as harsh winds blow.

Hard Pressed Between Living and Dying

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Doctors dropped the dreaded C word on my parent’s ears the month I turned three. A diagnosis like that . . . well, it’s life changing.

As a child I couldn’t comprehend how vastly it had changed my life. Before I could grasp what living meant, I faced my death. But, I didn’t really know it. I simply succumbed to the consequences of the ugly disease and then the horrific treatment and finally to the life-altering side effects. None of this was pretty. It mangled my body, my childhood, my adolescence, my family, my future. Nothing remained untouched.

Childhood cancer is an ugly cancer. You don’t ever get over childhood cancer. It changes you before you can even define who you are. But, you learn to fight, to persevere, to adapt, and to look at life through realistic lenses. If you, as they say “beat the disease” after it has thrashed you and busted you up, you live your life knowing that death is certain, yet confused because no one can tell you how much longer you have to live.

You become intimately acquainted with pain and suffering. You know what it is to be seen with curious and hurtful stares and hear insensitive and unkind words. You know what it is to ride on IV poles and scream at thumb pricks and cry out from a desperately lonely hospital bed in the middle of the night for your mom and dad who were kicked out of your room when visiting hours were over.

When the side effects of the treatment send you back to the operating table time and time again, you lay yourself down to keep on fighting to live.

When you run out of all options but one, you take that one fighting chance and you hold on to it tightly.

When the surgeon unzips you and peels back all the layers down to your failing heart and digs around all the cemented scar tissue from thirty-five years before and uses everything he knows to rebuild your heart and you barely make it off the table alive, you wake up not knowing how to go on any longer.



For my whole life I had been trying to figure out how to actively live. When my cardiologist told me to stop doing everything so I could keep on living, I faced my own mortality. Being a good doctor he didn’t give me statistics or tell me exactly how long my heart would keep on pumping because he didn’t have any statistics and he didn’t really know.

When my heart surgeon told me he would do everything he could to help me get back home to my family, I knew he wasn’t making any promises. Being a wise surgeon he didn’t give me statistics or false hope.

Being told your heart is failing and living through open-heart surgery is life-changing. Many times I was a hairbreadth away from my last exhale. I wasn’t afraid of dying. But, for the months I lived in ICU, I became terrified of living.



This world is a cruel place when you are teetering between life and death. It is hard work to live when a machine is keeping you alive. This world has nothing to offer when you are longing to be with Christ. Our living at this point is only for the benefit of those we love.

Facing mortality helps you to live more fully. Fighting to live when life is so frail entices you to welcome death. When you don’t know how to go on, there is one thing to do, keep going on.

Being healthy is prized in our society. Sickness is repulsive and for the weak. It makes people uncomfortable. I know how awkward it is for people to come sit with you in a hospital room when foul odors linger with pungent antiseptic. It is terrifying and confusing because we all know death is certain for anyone living. It is offensive and out of place when you should still have years of living.

It is even more uncomfortable to visit with someone who is broken in mind and spirit. We get frantic when left with the mere shell of the person.



We are all looking for purpose. Trying to figure out what our living is all about. Some of us are afraid of dying; some of us are terrified of living. The thing is none of us are very honest with each other or with ourselves.

I want neatly packaged answers and I keep unpacking hard to understand problems.

As joy is God’s grace recognized, living with joy is possible even in our suffering. I only see it that way if I believe in God’s sovereignty, and that His providential hand will bring all things to pass to complete the work in me that He has begun.



It appears to many as though I have recovered. I am back to my family, back to a full schedule and actively living. The reality is, you don’t ‘get over’ a diagnosis and disease—you may live through it, but you come out changed. So changed you don’t even know who you are anymore. And once you think you have it figured out, you discover you don’t, so you keep on looking to recognize God’s grace even in the pit of confusion and valleys bleak with shadows.

I strap on a breathing machine every night and power up the ventilation treatment for whenever I sleep. My body is still frail, my breath still short. The sobering thing is, this is as good as it is going to get for me on this earth.

Many days I wake up and wonder how I will go on. But, I will. I will keep on searching what living really means until one day, the day God has planned for me, when I won’t. For now, to live is Christ. That day, to die will be gain.

Even When the Way is Impossible: Go Forward

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Jon told me the way Dr. David walked into the waiting room, with a heavy weight on his shoulders, and weariness etched on his face, made him think I had not survived the surgery. He had anticipated not being able to take in all the finer details so he hit record on his phone as my surgeon began to speak. 

“Well, that was not good. It was worse than I expected.” he stammered. And right there Jon thought I was gone.

My surgeon continued: “I think the radiotherapy blasted the whole thing together—the heart, lung, the old lung—became like cement. It was very, very difficult. But, it was all done (cheers erupted at this point) . . . no, no, no you can’t celebrate yet, that was a lot of surgery. It was extreme . . . twice the anesthetist said, ‘I thought you were going to stop the operation and close her up’ and I said, ‘Well, if you close her up, you are sentencing her to death, then, she will die for sure.’” He paused briefly. “But, it’s not 100% . . . she could die tonight, tomorrow, next month, next year . . . that was a bad operation with one lung, a tragedy actually . . .”

For 13 minutes Dr. David described how he had to carve out cement–like dead tissue around and in my heart and put in plastic and steel hardware in whatever healthier tissue he could find. He didn’t know if I would heal with all the hardware inside me. All we could do was wait.

Jon stopped recording when my surgeon walked away and waves of intense sobs from relief and heartbreak shook his whole body.



No one knew if I would wake up.

Those hospital halls were foreign land to Jon that night. He wandered this wilderness to find me under a warming air blanket and hooked up to machines that lit up like a Christmas tree. Late into the night, he returned to his hotel room to rest knowing the days to come would be difficult and intense.

My older sister sat by my bedside all that night. She refused sleep to come to her eyes. I wasn’t going to die on her watch. She held my hand, never letting go of hope. She was there when my nurse attempted to wake me up the first time. Hours later she was there when the nurse took the breathing tube from out of my mouth and leaned down to tell me: “Rebekah, you did it.” She echoed my cry: “The Lord did it all! Thank-you God.”

The Lord did do it. The Lord has done great things and we are full of joy.

But, this joy was not in the absence of great anguish and pain.

Somehow joy and sorrow mingle. 

By the end of 80 days in that intensive care unit, Jon had worn a path in those halls. My surgeon had hoped there would be no further complications and that I could be sent home after seven days. But, after seven days I was not well. For weeks my body wasted away and I started to doubt whether we had made the right choice to risk surgery. In my distress, I wished I could go back to August 28th and refuse the operation.

I began to grumble. Tears streamed from my eyes. Thoughts turned sour. Grief walled me in. Fear held me captive.

I felt trapped. Literally in an 8x8 foot ICU room. Separated from my children. With an uncertain road ahead. 



Two months after my surgery, the head nurse came to chat with me. From years of caring for cardiac patients she knew how to be compassionate and how to craft a motivating pep talk. With gentle firmness she told me: “Crying and feeling sad is ok, but you can’t go back and wish you made a different decision. This is the choice you made and you need to go forward.”

The struggle was real. There was no easy way out.

I could identify with the Israelites: grumbling, bitterness rising, hope diminishing. I had left a very unhealthy place and now I needed to go forward.

Did I trust that God who had brought me to this place would see me right through?

Consider the exchange of words after God had led the people of Israel out of slavery in Egypt:

“ . . . the people of Israel lifted up their eyes, and behold, the Egyptians were marching after them, and they feared greatly. And the people of Israel cried out to the LORD. They said to Moses, ‘Is it because there are no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in the wilderness?. . . it would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness.’ And Moses said to the people, “Fear not, stand firm, and see the salvation of the LORD, which he will work for you today. For the Egyptians whom you see today, you shall never see again. The LORD will fight for you, and you have only to be silent.’

The LORD said to Moses, ‘Why do you cry to me? Tell the people of Israel to go forward. Lift up your staff, and stretch out your hand over the sea and divide it, that the people of Israel may go through the sea on dry ground.’”

The people of Israel were in a hard place between the Red Sea before them and the host of Egyptians behind. This was an impossible situation. They could not see a way out. But God wanted them to trust Him; to look not on what they could see, but what they knew of Him to be true.

And this is what they were to do:

Number 1: “Fear not, stand firm, and see the salvation of the LORD, which he will work for you today.”

Number 2: “The LORD will fight for you, and you have only to be silent.”

Number 3: “go forward”

This is what we are to do when faced with an impossible situation. When we are pressed with tragedy or trial we are to trust God and keep walking by faith.

Fear not, stand firm and look to God—To not fear is to be fully confident of God’s presence and protection. He is the one at work so He will get all the glory.

Be silent--quiet your mind, be still and know that He is God and that He will be with you in whatever you are called to endure.

Go forward--you can’t stay at the edge of the sea. One step at a time, your faith must be demonstrated by obedient actions.

We can’t go back. Trust God and go forward.

Refuse to trust and obey Him and you will certainly die as sure as if my surgeon had stopped the operation and closed me up, sentencing me to death.

But God makes the sea into dry land so we can go forward into the midst of the sea and on the other side, sing victoriously:

“The Lord is my strength and my song,
and he has become my salvation;
this is my God, and I will praise Him,
my father’s God and I will exalt Him. . .

You have led in your steadfast love
the people whom you have redeemed . . .”