When Out of the Blue Happens
To me, sailing conjures up an imagine of peacefulness as the boat smoothly sails through the water. The sun would always be shining, the seas would be calm, dolphins would be playfully swimming along the boat, and the winds just enough to blow gently against the sails. In sailing, depending upon the direction of the wind and which direction you want to go, and whether you are sailing upwind (windward) or downwind (leeward), the boat’s sails take on the characteristics of either an airplane wing or a parachute.
In a perfect world, life would also be smooth sailing. But life is not perfect, and it certainly is not smooth sailing. “Out of the blue” sometimes happens, threatening to capsize your boat, messing up your well laid out plans, tossing you and your possessions into the raging seas, and leaving you feeling helpless in the grip of the storm.
Not only does the unexpected happen, but life also gets twisted, it gets made crooked. I have a t-shirt that sums up the story of my life, and I suspect it sums up yours as well. It shows two graphs; What I planned and What happened.
Our efforts to try and figure out that twistedness, to straighten things out, to supply what is lacking, often leaves us exhausted and confused. We just do not always have answers. In the book of Ecclesiastes, we find that very thing – “What is crooked cannot be made straight, and what is lacking cannot be counted” (1:15).
Three months ago today, on November 3, we experienced one of those out of the blue, life getting twisted up moments. I suffered a stroke. Until the stroke began, there were no warning signs. Thankfully, my wife got me to the hospital quickly, affording me the ability to receive the clot-busting drug, which breaks up the clot causing the blockage and helps restore blood flow to the brain, lessening damage to the brain. I am getting multiple kinds of therapies and continue to heal and recover. I am currently on short-term disability with the goal of eventually (soon I hope!) returning to some sort of employment. As it was with my prostate cancer diagnosis four years ago, this stroke was out of the blue and it twisted up our well laid out plans.
My recovery prognosis is good, but brain injuries are all unique, and we just do not know what the future holds. While I do not know what will or will not get untwisted, one thing I do know; I am to unfailingly trust God and give him thanks.
Staying in Ecclesiastes, we are told that some things are just not in our control, and we are to accept both prosperity and adversity, knowing God is sovereign over both, without being able to explain just how it all will be worked out. Here is what we read – “Consider the work of God: who can make straight what he has made crooked? In the day of prosperity be joyful, and in the day of adversity consider: God has made the one as well as the other, so that man may not find out anything that will be after him” (7:13-14). Those two verses do not say that God initiated my stroke, but what I do believe they do say is that He can use the out of the blue, the unexpected crookedness, to test my faith and grow my faith.
Do I sometimes have moments of worry about what my life post-stroke will look like? Yes, I do. But it is because of God’s unwavering faithfulness to me, even as my ever-growing faith sometimes wavers, that I can live out these words – “He is not afraid of bad news; his heart is firm, trusting in the LORD” (Psalm 112:7). And these – “You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you” (Isaiah 26:3).
So, today, and every day, amid the out of the blue and crookedness of life’s what happened, will you rejoice, pray, give thanks, (1 Thessalonians 5:16-18), trusting that God knows what He is doing?
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