When I step foot into a hospital to visit a friend or a loved one, my mind is flooded with memories of days and nights that I spent on the side of the bed.  As I watched my husband go through days and nights of tests, scans, procedures and evaluation, my heart was wrecked with desires to fix whatever was broken.  If they could just find what was wrong, then they could make him better, but as the days passed we were told there was nothing they could do.  There’s a few things I learned during those long days and nights on the side of the bed.

1. Life is precious to us and to God.  

I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made…How precious are thy thoughts unto me, O God! how great is the sum of them.  Psalm 119: 14a & 17

2. I am totally out of control, but God is completely in control.  

And the Lord turned the captivity of Job, when he prayed for his friends: also the Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before.  Job 42:10 

3. I need to slow down and focus on Jesus.   

Give unto the Lord the glory due unto his name; worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness.  Psalm 29:2

4. I need God’s Word ALL of the time.

Unless thy law had been my delights, I should then have perished in mine affliction.  I will never forget thy precepts: for with them thou hast quickened me.  Psalm 119:92-93  

5. I personally know the creator of the wind and the waves.   

And he saith unto them, Why are ye fearful, O ye of little faith? Then he arose, and rebuked the winds and the sea; and there was a great calm.  Matthew 8:26

6. I need to completely trust God and not worry about the unknowns.  

Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee.  Trust ye in the Lord for ever: for in the Lord JEHOVAH is everlasting strength.  Isaiah 26:3-4

The heaviness of the reality that my husband might not make it through, weighed heavy on my heart, but I knew that whatever the future held, IT WAS GOING TO BE OK.  While I had moments of panic as my barely thirty year old husband struggled to even speak or get out of the bed, God gave me a strength beyond myself to guide him through the hospital halls as his strength increased little by little.  I remember watching him breath praying that God would just heal him.  I remember telling God, I was willing to walk through cancer, a debilitating disease, even death, if he would just give us a diagnosis.  Not knowing was the worst diagnosis in the world, and the doctors kept reminding us of that.  But God used that to teach me that His ways are not my ways.  Today, my husband is healthy and strong, no cancer, no disease, and no long term diagnosis; but the lessons I learned on the side of the bed will live on forever.

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord.  For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.  Isaiah 55:8-9

God has a way of revealing himself through some of our most difficult moments.

Don’t let the struggle blind you from what He has to say.

Thankful to continue learning and knowing God deeper,

Micah