Friday, February 13, 2015

Waiting, Trusting, and Taking the Next Step

Wait for the Lord;
    be strong and take heart
    and wait for the Lord.
Psalm 27:14
 
It all comes down to waiting and patience and trust.  Unfortunately, those are not easy things and most definitely not second nature.  We wait on doctors.  We wait on appointments.  Most of all, we wait on God.  We try to have patience.  We really do.  It is easier to be patient when we know what is coming, but while we are waiting on God to lead us to the next step, patience does not always come naturally.  Finally, there is trust.  Trusting God is not a one time deal.  Trusting is an active process.  It is a day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute decision to hand over our worries, concerns and problems to the One who has never for a minute lost control of the situation. 

We walked into our appointment on Wednesday full of hope and anticipation of what the panel of experts was going to say.  We walked out deflated and disappointed with their response of, "there is nothing we can do."  We thought we had waited long enough.  We though we had been patient with the process.  We trusted that these doctors would have the answers.  Suddenly, those things came crashing down.  We were reminded in that moment that there is only One whom we can trust completely.  One who holds us while we wait.  One who has ALL the answers.  The response of these experts did not come as a surprise to Him.  That door was being closed and our prayers for a clear direction had been answered.  Time to take the next step forward.  (Insert a short period of crying, trying to take in the shock, asking why, praying for direction...just being honest) Okay, moving on. 

Deep breath. 

Wait. 

Trust. 

Be patient. 

We were ready to wait patiently for the next step, but God showed us he was ready to move now.  Thursday morning, Kris contacted a hospital which had an Adult Congenital Heart Defect Clinic.  They specialize in working with adults who were born with heart defects and, praise God, survived.  The call was made at 8:30 am and at 2:50 pm we were sitting in the doctors office.  For the first time in his adult life, my husband sat with a doctor who did not look at his medical history and tests and say, "humm...that's strange."  He sat with a doctor who listened to his symptoms and said, "that makes sense" and "I've seen this before".  Kris' numbers and symptoms didn't surprise this doctor because this was his area of expertise. It was like a breath of fresh air.  Our kids were in the room with us and at one point, after the doctor left, our son said, "I think that appointment was very helpful.  It's like the doctor actually listened to us." (He's a pretty insightful 9 year old.) 

Now, we wait for the doctor to review all the imaging Kris has had done over the past 2 months to make sure that there is nothing the doctors missed and to make sure the anatomy of his aorta will support having a stent put in.  Once those things are confirmed, we will move forward with scheduling the procedure to repair his re-coarctation. 

Our waiting isn't over and we still trust that God is going to continue to move and work in our lives.  No matter the situation, God's plan is always the best.  His strength is always perfect.  We can always put our complete trust in him. 

Amen.

Celebrating a good doctors appointment!

1 comment:

Unknown said...

So well written. Watching and waiting with you! xox