This question has held a particularly great meaning for me in the last week. We were just driving along home, in daylight with no snow, when someone hit us out of nowhere and we both found ourselves in our first car accident. It was a blur but I remember Jonathan swerving, an impact, him shouting, and rubbing my neck because it started hurting. The lady apparently didn’t see us coming. The impact had been along my side of the car and my door wouldn’t open.
Fast forward a day, I’m getting neck X-rays to find out that I indeed have whiplash and my third concussion in a year and a half. As I took the doctor’s papers, I sighed in defeat because this is exactly what I expected.
I don’t think I can describe in words how devastating this accident has been for me. Any thoughts of thankfulness that we are both alive and not in worse condition fade quickly behind heavy emotions of frustration and anxiety. My previous concussions were brought about by stupid reasons and I’ve tried to be incredibly careful since. But this one--this one happened completely out of my control, no matter how careful I could be.
Being the intense hypochondriac I am, my anxiety skyrocketed when I found myself again unable to go through daily life without shooting pain in my head and feeling the disorientation of the world swirling around me. I can’t describe concussions well, but your brain hurts and can’t process properly, you’re off-balance and dizzy. You just don’t feel like yourself--out of control of your brain and your body. Each concussion has made me out of commission for about ten days. I can’t do much but lay on the couch and other trivial tasks since I’m not supposed to stare at screens or heavily concentrate on anything. It’s the worst. You just want it all to go away and to simply be “normal” again.
And I can’t even begin to get into the fear that I have about having sustained three concussions in such a short period of time. It doesn’t help that everyone responds with “how bad” just one concussion is. Or how I don’t even play contact sports. I KNOW. I am freaking terrified at the damage that has already been done and what will come in the future. I can’t get through the day without thinking about it and feeling crippling anxiety.
Who knew just this one event would unravel my deep idols of control, health, and ultimately, security. Everything about the accident, my concussions, and my recoveries are out of my control and they’ve left me totally defeated. I’ve been challenged to see that I really don’t have any control at all, even in the areas I intertwine so closely with my heart. Because if I care about it that much more, if it is that much more guarded, I have that much more control, right?
The Lord says, “Do you trust me?”
I think, “Yes,” but everything in me screams, “Hell NO!”
Surely, God could’ve taught me through other means than these that incur such damage. Surely, if He was for my good, He wouldn’t hurt me so. He wouldn’t repeatedly bring me to tears as I physically feel my grip on control being ripped from me. He wouldn’t be so cruel.
And this is the first time I’ve ever thought of God as cruel. Everything I’ve ever known about His character is being challenged as I am fiery with anger. And ultimately, I end up in tears realizing that this is the cup I chose when I decided to follow in faith. This world is absurd and I am sinful and I won’t understand God’s ways. Senseless suffering is guaranteed. Lack of control is, too. But is this the cup I still want to drink?
Never has this passage resonated so closely to me: Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.
So I guess this is faith. The internal turmoil of dying to self daily. Trusting blindly, to my own astonishment, that God is trustworthy and good. Trusting that I can learn contentment in this, and in the inevitable events like this in the future. I now understand a glimpse of why Jesus sweat blood in the garden.
This is the reality of the Christian walk--regardless of circumstances, always answering “Yes” to the “Do you trust me?”
