She did not choose this struggle. If she had been given the option, she would have taken a pass on watching her daughter live with a chronic illness. Since she didn’t have a choice, and she was thrust into this situation, she has chosen to lean into Jesus and walk courageously.

She is my friend, but she is also teaching me, through the struggle, what faith in action means. Today it’s my joy to share her post with you. You can read more of her writing by visiting her blog.

Please give a warm welcome to Christyn as she shares with us.

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I have a joy deep inside, because I know, without a shadow of a doubt, I am exactly where God wants me to be……

It seems strange that I can utter those words from my viewpoint.  It is four in the morning, and I am facing my daughter with half a dozen tubes coming out of her body.  Every once in a while I hear her moan, roll over and press the ‘boost’ on the pain pump, then roll back over to try and sleep in the middle of the cacophony of five beeping machines running simultaneously.  Machines that provide her life-necessitating sustenance.  She is on oxygen, formula, narcotics, a multitude of medications including antibiotics and more antibiotics as well as fluids – all with the sole purpose to bridge a gap for Rebecca’s body as she fights to recover from insults to her organs.  So how is it humanly possible to feel joy in the middle of this madness?

The other day I was conversing with one of Rebecca’s gastro-intestinal doctors.  He confessed he was very concerned about her staph pneumonia and his utmost reason was because the respiratory system was out of his realm of specialty.  Unlike the pancreas, where he had knowledge and expertise, the lungs were unknown territory for this seasoned physician.

As I listened to his words I realized his emotions mirrored how I felt on a daily basis.  Everything in the medical world is out of my ‘field of expertise.’  I am not a doctor by trade, a trained nurse or medical technician, and I am most certainly not a skilled surgeon.  I am simply a mother who loves her child deeply.  And I have absolutely no control over the diseases that rage through my daughter’s body.

But God does….

The brutal reality is, any control that I or anyone else mistakenly thought we had was never ours to begin with.  For even the most talented of physicians and the most devoted of mothers are merely servants of the Most High.

So by acknowledging my Lord’s sovereignty, I begin to accept my trial.  I may hate it, I may grieve it, and I may never understand it – but I accept that if God has allowed it – there is a purpose for it.

My struggle has meaning. 

When I hit rock bottom, I have two choices – bury my face in the rocks, or look up.  When I choose to look up and see how vast the sky is, it reminds me of how limitless my God is.  His ways are not my ways – they are infinitely bigger and infinitely better.

So my unexpected miracle of the day is joy – discovered in the depths of my soul by my Lord who is fully in control.  Even in the most chaotic of circumstances.

“May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in Him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit” Romans 15:13.