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My mother-in-law burst into my office holding my year-and-a-half old daughter. Red in the face, lethargic and looking irritated, this precious little girl scratched at her stomach. “Something’s wrong!” exclaimed her grandmother. “She doesn’t look right and she just threw up.”
Moving deliberately, but calmly, I asked my one-on-one, who I was meeting with at the time, to excuse me. We walked back over to our home next door from the leadership school we staff. My wife was arriving home at the same time and explained that our daughter had tasted a few bites of pancake hours earlier, which contained egg — an ingredient our daughter is highly allergic to — so we made the decision to get our daughter to the emergency clinic.
I drove like a banshee to the nearest clinic, my worry and excitement growing as our little one vomited in the car, onto my wife who was holding our daughter. We raced into the clinic where they assessed that our little girl’s heartbeat and breathing were still in a safe place but that they couldn’t take our insurance, sending us across town to another clinic that would.
Her lethargy growing and our prayers and urgency swelling, we booked it for the next clinic where, thankfully, we were admitted almost immediately. Throwing up more as we were brought back into the triage center, we could tell our situation was distracting nurses from their work and concern across the room was growing.
As we disrobed our child, we could see her skin was bright red and she was very uncomfortable. Her vitals were taken and we waited an uncomfortable amount of time for the proper antihistamines and steroids to be administered to our little one. They told us that if the situation worsened, we’d need to call an ambulance and rush from the clinic to the emergency room.
Our nerves strained, we hung in the balance with our little child in our arms, doing our best to calm her and ourselves.
In moments like these, when it is almost impossible to “be still and know”, how do we find our “abiding current” — that deep wellspring of sustaining peace that resting in God provides?
We held our daughter tightly as the nurses delivered two shots at once. Screaming back at the trauma and pain of the situation, our daughter climbed into my arms and we spoke words of consolation to her. The skin irritation and pain soon diminished and, after monitoring her for an hour or so, we were released from the clinic.
In retrospect, I know that God is teaching me to draw from the peace that only He gives. I’m not saying that God made my little girl sick or any of that — we can leave matters of will to another day — what I am saying is that He is effectively using situations like these to whisper to me, “I am your peace”. In the midst of trial and turmoil around me, I have a decision to either join in the rush of the moment, or “be still and know that He is God” and I am man, and that is enough.
Can you give over control (especially in regards to the situations that you can’t do anything about anyway) and trust that He is enough for you?
What does it look like for you to trust him in the midst of life?