I flipped out the light switch in my kitchen and walked into the living room. Out of sheer habit, I walked over to the french double doors of the balcony that overlooked the parking spaces underneath our apartment. At that moment I realized what I was doing: I was waiting for him. I was looking for him. I was hoping somehow that it was all a bad dream. Maybe he’d still come driving up in our 1967 volkswagon bug and the past 3 weeks of my life was just a nightmare. But then it hit me like a ton of bricks all at once. “He’s never coming home, is he, God?” I dared to whisper as tears streamed down my face. And that’s the first time I’d ever truly wept. I didn’t know I could feel so much pain deep down in my heart. The shock had only slightly begun to wear off and I had never known what it was like to feel so incredibly heart broken.
I don’t think anything in the world can prepare you for the deep trials of life. I had faced other challenges, but nothing could prepare me for this. Several weeks earlier, God gave me the biggest trial I have ever faced. My husband had fallen from a 3 story window and six days later passed on to meet His Savior. I was in shock. Devastated. Unprepared. I kept thinking, ¨No one has ever told me what to do in case of death.¨ ¨Is this really happening?¨ I asked myself over and over. ¨Can´t I go to sleep and wake up with my husband next to me in bed and shudder at the horrid nightmare, yet hug him close as I fall back to sleep?¨ Yet it was reality. No matter how much I tried to wish it away, or wanted to avoid it, the biggest trial of my life this far stared coldly at me in the face. Still to this day, it seems too heavy a burden to carry, too cruel an accident to be a reality, and yet I wake up every morning to the horrible truth: he’s gone… Until heaven. I won’t see him ever again on this earth. I will never hold his hand again, hug him when he needs a friend, encourage him while he’s discouraged, cook for him when he’s hungry, or make him laugh when he’s sad…. ever again. ¨He was only 26¨ I thought over and over. ¨We were serving God, every day, with everything we had. Why did God take him?¨ ¨There’s so much more we have to do here in Peru. So much work, so much need. So many dreams and plans and hopes and now…. What? What in the world do I do?
Daniel had just been drilling our teenagers during his preaching, “There are two changes in life. The ones we can control, and the ones we can’t. What is the only thing we can control?” And our teens would yell out, “Our reaction.” Never did I imagine His preachings would be precisely what I was about to desperately need.
I don’t think anything in the world can prepare you for the deep trials of life. I had faced other challenges, but nothing could prepare me for this. Several weeks earlier, God gave me the biggest trial I have ever faced. My husband had fallen from a 3 story window and six days later passed on to meet His Savior. I was in shock. Devastated. Unprepared. I kept thinking, ¨No one has ever told me what to do in case of death.¨ ¨Is this really happening?¨ I asked myself over and over. ¨Can´t I go to sleep and wake up with my husband next to me in bed and shudder at the horrid nightmare, yet hug him close as I fall back to sleep?¨ Yet it was reality. No matter how much I tried to wish it away, or wanted to avoid it, the biggest trial of my life this far stared coldly at me in the face. Still to this day, it seems too heavy a burden to carry, too cruel an accident to be a reality, and yet I wake up every morning to the horrible truth: he’s gone… Until heaven. I won’t see him ever again on this earth. I will never hold his hand again, hug him when he needs a friend, encourage him while he’s discouraged, cook for him when he’s hungry, or make him laugh when he’s sad…. ever again. ¨He was only 26¨ I thought over and over. ¨We were serving God, every day, with everything we had. Why did God take him?¨ ¨There’s so much more we have to do here in Peru. So much work, so much need. So many dreams and plans and hopes and now…. What? What in the world do I do?
Daniel had just been drilling our teenagers during his preaching, “There are two changes in life. The ones we can control, and the ones we can’t. What is the only thing we can control?” And our teens would yell out, “Our reaction.” Never did I imagine His preachings would be precisely what I was about to desperately need.
I’m not sure how, and I’m not sure why, but that night as I wept bitter tears realizing he would never come home, I believe the Holy Spirit prompted me to make a most important decision. When I came to the place that I felt I could no longer cry, I looked up into heaven and told God something I will never forget. ¨God, I promise you, that no matter how many times I cry, no matter how bad my life gets, no matter how much I hurt or grieve, and even if you don’t do anything good in my life ever again, I will always trust you.¨
You may have memorized Prov. 3:5 as a kid, ¨Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not unto your own understanding.¨ Such a simple truth, and yet so incredibly hard a principle to apply when we truly can´t see a rhyme or reason to why God does what He does. Yet the one thing we can do, is choose to trust His heart; even when our eyes cannot see. Although it’s not always easy, this has become a decision I choose to make day after day, moment after moment. After all, it is He who made us, and who delicately writes every part of our story. He has promised it will all work out for His good. So when you don’t understand, when you don’t see His plan, when you can’t trace his hand, trust His heart.
