The last five years have taught me to be mentally prepared for bad things to happen.
Oops, sorry, we misread Cody’s MRIs for the last three years. He has a different kind of epilepsy, one which not only will he not outgrow it but he will need brain surgery for it.
Oops, I was wrong four years ago when I first met with you, Chuck. You do actually have a genetic issue and it’s likely what’s killing your family members. You need to have it monitored and will need open-heart surgery at some point.
And yes, those are mostly direct quotes – no candy coating going on with either doctor.
We heard both of those about two months apart. One year later we heard it was time to start brain surgery assessments and then time to have open-heart surgery.
A few months later, we had a flooded and destroyed formerly fully-finished basement. Then a job loss a week before open-heart surgery.
Another open-heart surgery less than three years later. A stroke.
So when something went wrong last week with the website I have spent over two years creating…well, of course it did.
Except I’ve taken it relatively calmly, after the initial panic.
I mean if someone hacked and destroyed my site, they are way more technically savvy than I am and there’s really not much I can do about it.
I still haven’t figured it out. So, Come So Alive might look a little different this year. Or maybe not.
I guess we won’t know until we get there.
Which is how life is anyway so perhaps that’s fitting. Maybe even that’s the lesson God wants me to learn this new year.
You’d think I’d have learned that lesson after the year of stroke we’ve had, but, no, I went to bed last night wondering about the future…
“You won’t know till you get there, Carrie, so stop trying to figure it out. To guess. To prepare. You can’t prepare. No matter how much you go over projections and possibilities in your head, you’ll never be fully prepared for all life brings.
“But you can let Me walk next to you, you can slow down and walk next to Me, so that when you get there, you get there with Me. And I AM all the preparation you’ll need.”
So instead of thinking ahead, I decided to look back. I scrolled through my photos on my phone from the last year and rediscovered these beautiful sunsets.
Do you know that Jewish days begin at sunset?
“While a day in the secular calendar begins and ends at midnight, a Jewish day goes from nightfall to nightfall.”*
As I post this, the sun is setting. Another new day is starting. And I can try to prepare for the bad I’ve come to anticipate.
Or I can simply enjoy the sunset closing out today, knowing no dark night lasts forever. Tonight’s sunset will usher in a new morning – and He will be there.
He already is.
I will walk among you and be your God…
Leviticus 26:12
*https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/526873/jewish/The-Jewish-Day.htm