“Many, Lord my God,
are the wonders you have done,
the things you planned for us.
None can compare with you;
were I to speak and tell of your deeds,
they would be too many to declare.”

Psalm 40:5

I have to give credit for this post to my husband, David. Earlier this week, we were doing our nightly Bible study together and one of our readings was the first five verses of Psalm 40. David suddenly stopped and said, “Verse 5 is exactly us right now. God has done so much for us and has so many amazing things planned.” So I’m going to give credit where credit is due and give glory to the Lord by telling you what He’s done for us.

It goes without saying that God did an amazing and unlikely thing by bringing us together. We happened to wind up at the same college in the fall of 2004 (despite growing up 400 miles from each other), in the same major, in the 30-student Honors Program, living at opposite ends of the same hall. It only took David three months to fall in love with me, but it took my heart a lot longer to be ready for a relationship. It wasn’t until spring of 2006 that I was ready. And then I instantly knew he was the one.

We got married in spring of 2010 once we finished the six long, arduous years of pharmacy school. We were both blessed with good jobs at the same healthcare institution, one of the best in the nation. This was at a time when it was starting to become exceedingly difficult to find jobs in the field, and it is really nothing but a miracle that we even wound up with jobs in the same city, much less at the same hospital. Had we graduated in 2011 instead of 2010, we likely would not have been hired. But before long, we were each working in our dream fields: myself in pediatrics and David in emergency medicine. We are still young in our field, so certainly not what I like to call air-tight erudite, but being in a field where you literally learn something new every day is rewarding.

In 2011 we were blessed with the opportunity to buy a house and move out into the suburbs. We’ll have been living in this house, where we intend to raise our children and grow old together, for five years next month.

Fast forward to 2014, when I was diagnosed with endometriosis. When my first surgery (ablation) failed to help my symptoms and I actually declined in health, we were blessed to be able to travel to Atlanta, over 700 miles away, to have surgery performed by Dr. Sinervo of the Center for Endometriosis Care. We had to pay out of pocket, but again, were blessed to be able to afford it through years of carefully managing our money. Without that surgery, I would not have gotten my life back. It truly made all the difference in the world.

Fast forward again to 2016, the year my life then truly fell apart. I discovered I was infertile. I fell into major depressive disorder. I suffered from months of near daily migraines and was eventually diagnosed with a brain tumor. I had another surgery in Atlanta. Where could there possibly be a silver lining in all of that trauma?

God used all of those things to call us back to Himself. Nothing else was getting our attention, so He needed to speak loudly. And did He ever. By the end of January to the beginning of February, I turned a corner from being passively suicidal to diving back into the Word of God on a daily basis. It happened at a time I was on my first extended leave of absence from work, so I had all the time in the world to pull out my old Bible from college that had remained closed for about six years, blow the dust off it, and dig into the Word that I used to know fairly well. Together, David and I went through an infertility devotional. Once we finished that, we started 100 days in the gospels, covering the earthly ministry of Jesus in chronological order. We’ll be done in a week (we’ve had to take some periodic breaks due to schedules.) We also do some other nightly topical readings together.

But through doing all of that every night, it’s given us both a hunger and a thirst for God; I have more daily devotionals than I can almost keep track of, but being on disability has allowed me to spend as much time as I want in the Word every day and I love it so much. I can clearly hear God’s voice for the first time in forever. If David’s work schedule ever aligns and my health cooperates, we’re planning to go scouting for churches in the near future so we can fellowship with a body of believers in a Bible-teaching church.

So that silver lining? God won two of His children back. I am still dealing with everything mentioned in the 2016 paragraph above. I’m having brain surgery in less than three weeks. And perhaps that will lead to a long-term ceasefire in my body.

But God has performed many wonders in our lives already and has fulfilled many of his plans for us to be together. And when I think of the things He yet has planned for us, for our hopeful future family, even our children who haven’t been conceived, He knows them and has plans for them.

“I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful, I know that full well.
My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place,
when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed body;
all the days ordained for me were written in your book
before one of them came to be.”

Psalm 139: 14-16

Whatever else God has planned for us, no one can fathom. But we trust Him; He’s blessed us so much already, how could we not trust?

And this song is how I feel about it, a song by my second favorite band inspired by 1 Peter 1:3-7. Our faith must be refined through our trials. All praise be to God, always and forever. Amen.

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