Thank you, God. Many of us probably repeat this phrase hundreds of times each week. I know I do.
Thank you, God, for allowing the baby to take a long nap. I needed a break!
Thank you, God, for healing us after a long round of sickness. I couldn’t survive another day!
Thank you, God, for getting us through a day of errands without the kids having a meltdown. I’m tired enough as it is.
Thank you, God, for bringing the rain to an end so I could get outside and walk with the stroller. I needed the fresh air!
I find myself saying “Thank you, God,” in both the mundane and magnificent. But I did not expect these words to cross my mind just one month after experiencing a 20 week pregnancy loss. It was the strangest thing. I had returned to the gym after isolating myself at home for several weeks. After losing our baby, I hadn’t had the energy to venture out, and even though I still didn’t really want to be there, I knew I needed to start getting back into a normal routine. I was standing in the shower at the gym, broken, crying, and alone, when the words “Thank you, God” echoed through my head twice. I wondered where those words had come from. I certainly didn’t feel thankful. How could I be thinking that at what was most certainly the most devastating time in my life? I remember feeling a little bit guilty as these words came into my head. How could I possibly be thankful? What about my baby? This is absolutely not what I wanted.
But the words were there and I knew they had come from the deepest parts of my soul because they definitely weren’t in line with how I was actually feeling. I certainly hadn’t been acting thankful. I was jealous. I was angry. I was sad. I couldn’t see or hear of another pregnant woman without becoming enraged on the inside, my face wet with tears on the outside. However, I knew that this experience would change me. I remember thinking that this loss would make me a better person. More compassionate. More grateful. More appreciative of so many things that I know myself to take for granted. Knowing these things didn’t erase the anger or the grief, but it did open my eyes to God’s truths that I had never really thought about; that I had never really needed to think about. God will provide. God does provide. Even when we are too blinded by our circumstances to see his provision.
That moment in the shower has stuck with me. It was significant. It is a small moment that took place during the most crushing event in my life, yet I remember it vividly. And from that moment, I am learning to trust that God will provide; that he will and does turn the messes of life into something remarkable.
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