When Plans Fall Apart: Sick Day--No, Sick YEAR--Musings on God's Timing

As a recent college grad, I tend to think of stretches of time as semesters with finals weeks acting as mile markers. As you may have guessed, my last little stretch from December finals to May finals was an eventful one, and not just because of the whole global shutdown thing. You may not be able to tell just by looking at me, but in that stretch of time, I’ve become not just a college graduate, but also a medical marvel of sorts. First it was the terrible kidney infection, which came just in time for my school’s Christmas choir performances and finals week. Then I found out I had three kidney stones at once, which resulted in a surgery in January after a very rough month. February through March brought back problems and physical therapy, and mid-March to the end of May was a barrage of medical tests for constant joint pain followed by a diagnosis of severe tendonitis in both arms that required painful injections. And now, because life doesn’t really unfold in semesters and graduation wasn’t the magic cure-all, I have yet another bad kidney infection and a stone that’s lurking around in my left kidney. Now, I’m not saying all this to complain. In fact, self-deprecating jokes about my body falling apart and the year 2020 being determined to strike me down is more my style… However, I do want to share two lessons that I feel like God has taught me in this, the hardest and, hopefully (since I’m getting married in a little over a month), the best year of my life.

1. Timing is everything. If there’s one thing I know for sure from experiencing so many back-to-back medical problems, it’s that timing can be pretty cruel. It can get kind of tricky “rolling with the punches” when every time you start to recover from one punch, another one takes you out. But, following the theme of thinking in terms of dates and semesters, there’s one date that will always come to mind when I’m questioning the timing of both good and bad things in my life: June 13, 2020. This was supposed to be my original wedding date, but, amid COVID-19 concerns and personal health problems, we decided to push it back to July 18th. At first, I was disappointed that things weren’t going as planned. That is, until two days before the wedding when I was in the ER getting IV pain and nausea meds and CT scans. Fast forward to June 13th, and I was still feeling so terrible that it would have made for a miserable wedding day. Two months or so ago when we decided to change the date, I couldn’t possibly have predicted that June 13th and the week leading up to it would be what it was (although maybe I should have guessed based on my current track record). Being sick yet again is not fun, but it’s one of those things that was inevitable. But God knew ahead of time what would happen and went before me to work things out so that I could (fingers crossed!) enjoy my wedding day instead of just surviving it.

2. Timing is nothing. I know, this seems a bit contradictory to lesson number one. However, when before I was talking about God’s timing and how He works things out for us even out of our bad situations, right now I’m talking about the world’s timing. If you’d asked me what I’d be doing right now exactly one year ago, I’d have said that I would have just finished another amazing, totally normal semester at BSC and be starting a job that was already lined up for me upon graduation. I’d also remember the date and say, “Oh, and I’d be on my honeymoon!” Well, with the craziness both in my own life and on a global scale, that’s just not what came to be. Now, it would be easy to ask God why He let my world fall apart, and I know this because I have. But recently, I’ve really come to understand that it’s not God’s job to prevent all bad things from happening to me. Life is hard, but He’s the one who makes it better. Sometimes that means taking the problems away, and sometimes that means giving me a peaceful, positive spirit and showing me how to help others so my own situation doesn’t take my focus away from what really matters. If we live our lives knowing that sometimes we just have to trust in God’s timing even when it seems scary, and confusing, and even impossible, then our personal mile markers of success fade away in favor of peace and contentment in wherever God has placed us.

     I’m not really sure how to end this (you’ll have to make allowances for the sickly here😊), but if you’re struggling with life at the moment, I want you to know that you aren’t defined by your lists of successes and failures just like I’m not defined by my... well, admittedly impressive list of ailments from these past seven months. A Bible verse that has really helped me out in this time is Proverbs 16:9, which says, “A man’s heart plans his way, but the Lord determines his steps.” 2020 has been a tough year for just about everyone, but let us all step forward in confidence that our plans that have fallen apart will eventually give way to something much better than we could have imagined.