When I started writing down my story, I remember telling you that one of the things that I was praying for was to have some clarity or closure to my ordeal. I wanted to be able to look back on that year from "hell" with a different perspective and I knew that if I didn't get God's perspective on the situation I would forever be paralyzed with fear. The truth is power and that is what I intended to seek.
You see, I do not believe "All's well that ends well." Just because I am healed now and my family is stronger than it ever has been, it still doesn't mean that I have to accept what happened to me as being "good." And I don't really think that is what God wants me or anyone else to do. How silly would that be? To just take what I am given and not think twice about it? There is nothing good about post-partum depression or the seriousness of the illness that afflicted me for over a year.
God gave us women brains, sister! He created us to be brave and bold.
"A woman of valor who can find?" Proverbs 31:10
That word valor that is used in this oh so infamous chapter about the "perfect" woman. You know ,the chapter we have all heard in church and in our bible studies, the one that people sometimes mis-interpret as this perfectly submissive woman that goes about her life with smile on her face at all times? Well that same word that God uses to describe the proverbs 31 woman, "valor" is the same word used to describe the warrior Gideon as being brave.
"A Brave Woman, Who Can Find?"
Yep, we are to be warriors that are brave! That is you my friend and it is me so let's not let anyone tell us different! Ok, off my soap box!
You know what true bravery is? It is seeking the truth. It is seeking the truth no matter the cost, no matter the outcome. It is being brave enough to look an injustice in the face and accept it has happening in your life but not accepting the evil hold it so desperately seeks to have on your life.
Somehow we are conditioned to think that to be faithful and pleasing to God that we need to put on a smile and declare all is good (and lots of us even proclaim that we would do it all over again!).
Not me. I would never do that year over again. Not even if I know what I know now and all the ways God has blessed my family through that tragedy, I would not do it again. And I bet if you are going through anything similar, you would say the same thing...I hope!
I do know that God is good, but what happened to me and what I went through was not good. I needed to understand, I needed something deeper to hold onto. I had lots of questions, not a lot of answers. At the very least, I was going to search for the truth and pray that God provided answers. Not because he owes me that (God is God, blah blah, blah) but because he loves me and he cares for me and he would want to help me understand.
How could I say that I still believed in God but still be so confused as to how he fit into that year from hell. My most honest and truthful question was (and even was at the time I started this story) "Did God really save me or did it all just end up working out ok?" How could I say that God saved me when he was silent, no where to be found? Where was he on the days, weeks and months I lay in my closet begging for help, begging to be rescued and put out of my misery?
Where was he when my baby girl had to go and live half way across the country with family because I couldn't care for her the way I wanted to? And maybe even the biggest question of all...Why did God wait so long to connect me with the only doctor that could cure me?
The doctor was right here in Houston the whole time. God knew that. He knew that when I checked myself into the psychiatric hospital for 3 weeks, he knew that when I under-went ECT, he knew that when I went to the Meier Clinic in Dallas for 3 weeks, he knew that when I met with the top endocrinologist at Johns Hopkins who said it was all in my head...he knew the doctor he would use to cure me was right around the corner. The cure was within a 20 minute drive from my house, my condition was diagnosible within 60 seconds of the doctor looking at my chart. I didn't need a year of searching the country for help, I needed a doctor located right in my backyard, a doctor that I am confident God hand picked for me before I was born. So why did he wait so long?
I don't have all of the answers and I don't necessarily have all the words to articulate to you everything that I have learned over the past couple of months, but I can tell you that God has been more than faithful in providing perspective for me.
I hope to share with you what I have learned, in hopes that it might encourage you. I also hope to share it you as a proclamation as to what God had done for me. I hope that is what my writing will be.
Clearly God chose NOT to save me through a miraculous event, you know the kind of miracle we think of when we think of instantaneous healing, the flash of lightening coming down from heaven or the big sign on a bill board? Nope God chose to save me through his providence. And His Providence, I have come to learn, bares no less evidence for faith than the miracle of the parting of the Red-Sea.
(to be continued)
Recently I was reading Traveling Light by Max Lucado and one of the last couple chapters talks about Doubt - not that thats what you are dealing with here, but he talks about how God follows us - and pursues us even when we don't realize He's there. It made me think of your journey and how I can see that He followed you. Here's the link to that chapter on google books. Go to page 145 and read on. And I do recommend the whole book as well.
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