As a girl, I played the daisy game. He loves me (pluck). He loves me not (pluck). You hope the last plucked petal is “he loves me,” but you’re never really sure until you come to it. I remember sometimes cheating to get the answer I wanted.
I’ve been playing that same game with my faith. Over the past month, my husband Brad has been near death and back several times.
On April first, many of you know he was in a serious car accident. Broke a bunch of bones, lacerated the liver, collapsed a lung. Got pneumonia and was transferred to rehab—and we’re still arguing about which was worse.
In the rehab, he declined so rapidly that I felt as if I was watching him melt before my eyes. Wouldn’t or couldn’t eat. He was barely able to stand and had chronic low blood pressure at dialysis. Doctors were preparing us by talking about how these kidney patients don’t last more than eight or nine years, and he’s been on dialysis for ten years, you get the idea. Lights out, they warned us.
All the while, I’m plucking petals off dead daisies, hoping my husband of nearly forty-seven years won’t soon be pushing up daisies. And begging God to land on the God loves me space.
God loves me (and has a plan for my sad little life) seems easy when things are going in my preferred direction. And God loves me not is a go-to when I try to make sense of misfortune or a really crappy outcome. But unlike fickle daisies, my God’s love doesn’t change.
During these weeks of my spouse’s health whiplash, I’ve been back and forth with my faith. Loads of friends, family and even strangers are praying mightily: The grocery checker who wanted to know Brad’s name so she could pray. Thousands on Facebook and other social media. My neighbors. I am so grateful for such an outpouring of compassion.
Yet my thoughts about God’s goodness keep being interrupted by one crisis after another. Just about the time I’m thanking and praising because Brad takes a turn for the better, here comes another whammy. Day to day, it’s really hard to stop analyzing God’s reasons for the boomerangs. He’s OK, he’s so not OK. Rational me thinks it’s a terrible way to keep up our morale.
But then I remember that God’s ways aren’t exactly my ways.
If I were in charge, we’d see a big fat miracle. Brad would rise up out of the bed, all the bones knit together and the two of us would go dancing. God is definitely taking a less Hollywood approach, but four pints of blood and a few bites of soup actually have worked wonders. In fact, unless another whiplash development lies ahead, we may even bring him home soon.
And throughout this ordeal, people keep remarking about how strong I am, how cool, calm and collected. If only they knew that the Crippled Children’s Hospital way back when taught me to keep my tears to myself. Then and now, my lack of a meltdown is a survival technique, one I thank God for as I navigate old age.
Maybe I’ll break down later, but for now, I see how steady God’s hand is in all these frenetic developments. My prayers and wants and need change all the time. A lot of those things are wishes and hopes that align with my idea of the perfect life.
Yet as disappointed as I can be that bad stuff happens, God also is serving me great portions of grace and mercy, a flood of opportunities to care for not only those I love but for all God’s children.
Perhaps this is true grace—to be able to see beyond oneself to have compassion for someone who needs it. Watching my dear Brad struggle with the awful hard cervical collar (for several more weeks!) is a lesson in patience. Mercy looks like the soft collar he’s allowed to wear in bed. And love is his smile after all this worry.
Prayers and attitudes and wants and needs will always change. My circumstances will change (sometimes every few seconds) too. But God’s care for me (and you) stays as strong as the hardest rock. And just when you think the concrete will never move, it then softens to pull you under the feathery wings of mercy and grace.
Life is whiplash for most of us—we are constantly buffeted by cold crosswinds of random terrible stuff. But we’re also privy to a love bigger than ourselves, more vast than our dreams. God swallows me up in that love and cocoons my anxious heart. When my true love smiles at me, I can smile back.
I felt every word of this
Praying for you and Brad. 🙏