By Andrea Goebel
God’s Way
Philippians 4:6-7 says, “Have no anxiety at all, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, make your requests known to God. Then the peace of God that surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.”
I included this Bible verse in a column I wrote recently. As I typed the final paragraph, I felt slightly fearful: What trial was God going to send my way to test this belief? It was easy for me to write about trusting God and seeking his peace in small, daily conflicts — did I really know what it was like to trust him in bigger situations?
Most of the time, when I write about a certain circumstance when I have received God’s grace, I am still in the process of learning the lessons he is trying to teach me. Perhaps he is teaching me that faith is not something I will learn and then just use with ease for the rest of my life. Perhaps he is showing me that deep faith occurs as a result of trusting him time and time again throughout the challenges I face.
After I wrote that column, I felt convicted to practice what I had written about. For the next two weeks, I focused on surrendering my fears to God, and I felt that peace I had yearned for. It turns out, he was preparing me for the next phase of the journey. Exactly two weeks after my prayer life shifted, my husband was in a car wreck on his drive to work. He broke ten ribs and had a partially collapsed lung. He spent two days in the hospital while doctors ensured the rest of his body was OK and the chest tube they had put in was helping to drain the fluid from his lung.
Our family’s sense of normalcy shifted immediately. My husband, who works in construction for a living, used a walker to move around. Our children, excited from all the daily changes, went through ups and downs in their energy and emotional levels.
I functioned on autopilot. I knew this situation was temporary, but it felt so hard. To prevent panic from taking control of my thoughts, I prayed. I asked God to help us through. I asked him to give my husband strength and peace during his recovery. To help our children feel calm amidst the chaos. To help me trust him to handle all the questions I didn’t have answers to.
I know God has a plan for our family, and already, I can see him at work amidst this hard season. He saved my husband’s life, and daily, he reminds us of the gift of our parish community and our loving friends and family who continue to pray for and support our family.
On the way home from the hospital, as my husband and I were talking about the ways God has been present in this situation, I remembered that column and the Bible verse from Philippians. Earlier that day, as I opened the book “The Power of a Praying Wife” — the same book I had been reading the morning of my husband’s crash — the text of Philippians 4:6-7 was right there in front of me. That’s when I knew, this whole time, God had been preparing my heart to trust him from the unknowns in the hospital to the transition to life after we came home.
He will continue to lead me, and anyone who cries out for his help, as we place our trust in him.
“Trust in the Lord with all your heart, on your own intelligence do not rely; In all your ways be mindful of him, and he will make straight your paths” (Proverbs 3:5-6).