You can trust God to write your story.
He is faithful, and His watchful care over your life never fails. His Providence is good. Throughout this month, we’re sharing stories of God’s Providence that were submitted by our readers.
(Have a story of your own? You can share it with our blog team here.)
Today, we have stories of God’s hand working through miscarriage, abuse and depression, and parents’ decisions. Read and be encouraged. No matter what chapter of the story you’re in, no matter if the ending seems bleak, you can trust the Author of your story. He will right it all in the end.
You Can Trust God in Miscarriage
Earlier this week, just three days ago actually, we had a second trimester miscarriage. Our precious baby was born at twenty weeks.
We can see God’s Providence everywhere in this situation. He has clearly been preparing us to face this. As I have studied the Pentateuch this year in my personal quiet times, I’ve been amazed and captivated by the God revealed there—His holiness, His power, His majesty, His care for His people, His interest in the everyday details of our lives. When we found out the baby was gone, my mind immediately went to all I knew and had learned about God, and I was immediately comforted to think that this same unchanging God was with me and working things for my good.
We also saw God’s hand in all the little details. Though the baby had been gone for four weeks or so, we didn’t find out until I actually went into labor. This saved us from a choice of an agonising month-long wait for labor to begin or medical intervention and surgery. When we realised I was in labor and went to the emergency obstetric unit, there was no one else there and we were seen right away. This is unheard of. The wait to be seen is normally several hours. We had the undivided attention of the staff who were very kind and had complete privacy to absorb the news as there were no other patients in the unit.
Soon after the news that our baby had no heartbeat, my water broke naturally and I was able to deliver our baby naturally without any medical intervention which was less stressful for us and insured a quicker physical recovery. If I had gone into labor one day later, I would have to have given birth on the labor ward, surrounded by the cries of newborns, but by God’s Providence I was just inside the cut off limit to be allowed to deliver on a gynecology ward. We had a private room and the I have birth in the peacefulness of the night while the ward was quiet and the nurses were able to be with us as the patients were asleep. We were told. By a member of staff the next day that the ward being quiet at night and the nurses being able to devote their attention to us is unheard of. Again, we see God going before us as well as walking beside us through this.
We got out of the hospital the day after the birth and are now waiting for our baby’s body to be released to us for burial. Despite being heartbroken, we are also filled with joy at the knowledge that our baby is with the Lord and at God’s goodness to us.
I want to shout from the rooftops how great our God is! I also want to tell others not to be afraid of the future. I was always terrified of miscarriage and prayed that God would not ask me to walk through that. Our fourth pregnancy ended in miscarriage at eight weeks last December, two days before Christmas. While we were sad, I discovered God was faithful and He walked through it with us and orchestrated all the details in His providence to make it as easy as it could possibly be.
After we lost our fourth child, I found myself thanking God that at least it was relatively early and that I hadn’t had to go through labor and birth, then go home with my arms empty. I prayed that God would never ask that of me because I just didn’t think I could bear it, but now I find when I had to walk through it, God prepared me for it and again orchestrated all the details to make it as smooth and easy a process as was possible under the circumstances.
While we're still very much in the midst of this trial, God has taught me through these experiences that I do not need to fear the future. Suffering is a given in our fallen world, but our God is bigger than any trial we face and He cares for us as we walk through the fire.
Even in the middle of the labor and birth, I kept finding more and more things to be thankful for and found myself smiling through my tears as I realised afresh how wonderful our God is.
— Rachel*
You Can Trust God in Your Abuse Recovery and Depression
I struggled with suicidal thoughts and depression for about a decade. In my family, these kinds of struggles meant you were weak and that you had caused it yourself, so I didn’t have any help from my family or friends at all. My family was very cruel about what I was going through, so I stopped asking people for help. This turned out to be a good thing because it caused me to turn to God for help. At fifteen, I was planning to commit suicide, and it was at this moment that the Lord spoke to me and told me not to do it, that if I went through with my plan, I would be taking two lives because this would ruin my mother’s life. I was afraid to kill myself because the Lord told me not to do it, so I held on, believing He would heal me. I had no idea it would take a ten-year-long fight.
God used stories from the Holocaust and other Christians, specifically Corrie ten Boom, Eva Mozes Kor, and Louis Zamperini, to teach me about endurance and forgiveness. When I hit rock bottom and knew I wasn’t going to make it because of how strong the depression had become, I prayed for God to make the decision on whether or not I was going to live, and that if I was going to live, for Him to heal me of depression and suicidal thoughts and to help me forgive someone that I hadn’t been able to forgive and teach me how to live.
After praying this, I started waiting for God’s answer, and, every time I went to church, it was the exact same message: renew your mind in the Word of God. People would get mad because the pastor preached the same message for weeks, but I knew it was for me and that it was saving my life.
This was a very difficult season, and most of the time, I felt like spending time reading Scripture and praying was having zero impact on how I felt, but I decided to take it like I was a soldier in the military, ignoring my feelings and focusing only on what God said in His Word, even if I “felt” the opposite. What I experienced is what the Scriptures speak of: “You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free,” and “He sent His word and healed them, and delivered them from their destruction.” God healed my mind, my heart, and also miraculously helped me to forgive and love the person I had hated for years.
God has been doing amazing things in my heart and in my life: healing me from abuse and gradually freeing me from the things it has caused, freeing me from suicidal thoughts, anxiety, cutting, and depression, and teaching me to obey what He says, even when I don’t want to do what He tells me. I have begun to learn the blessings of obedience and the joy that follows. I have also learned how beautiful it can be when we allow the Lord to deal with our sins and help us to walk in the Spirit and in holiness. Now, I want to live for Christ every day and to share the message of the gospel with others so they can experience the same joy and freedom that Jesus has given to me.
— Amanda*
You Can Trust God with Your Parents’ Choices and Education
I was in grade four and doing well in school. So well, in fact, that at the end of the year, my teacher approached my parents and suggested that I be put ahead a grade. My parents had already faced this scenario with my brother, but had turned down that opportunity, thinking that socially, it would cause difficulty.
This time, through God’s Providence, they agreed. We were devout, and I was attending a religious school. Attending morning services and making monthly confession to a priest were part of school life, as well as having an altar to a saint in our classroom, which we would decorate and kneel in front of to pray at a certain time every year.
When I was in grade eight, my final year in that school, my father came to faith in Christ and stopped attending services with us. Through his witness, I placed my faith in Christ and so did my mother. We started attending a different church the summer after I graduated from grade school. I have always seen the timing of these events as God’s mercy to me, sparing me from what could have been a difficult situation.
In high school, I took French classes, along with my friends from my former grade school. Since we were all native French speakers, we were all accelerated two years in that class and granted two free credits. This allowed me to graduate a year earlier from high school, using one summer to get the prerequisite credits to skip a year. Since I was barely seventeen years old when I was ready for post-secondary education, I decided that I should go to Bible school to find out what God would have me do with my life. It was there that I met a very special first-year student who became my husband.
We have been married for thirty-seven years and God has blessed us with three children, one of which has Down syndrome. My husband is a tender father to her. I know that he is the one that God ordained for me to share life with and to travel this path of parenting our precious daughter. It amazes me to see the hand of God in my life.
— Sylvie
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