A Testimony

Next month we are having a celebration for the anniversary of the women’s organization in our church. For that night they are putting together a little book with a picture of each woman in the organization and a contribution from each of us – a short story, poetry, testimony, etc. Last week I was trying to think of what I would write, and I couldn’t really come up with anything that I was satisfied with. Then the other day I was talking to someone from church and I told her about how one of our old cars was totaled a few years ago, which was actually a blessing in disguise because the car was having major electrical problems and we needed to have a more dependable car, but couldn’t afford to replace it. She said that would be a good story to contribute for the little book at church. So, I sat down to write about that and several other events in our lives that have been meaningful to me. This is what I ended up with, and I thought I’d share it here:

One thing that I have started to learn is that Heavenly Father plays a role in each of our lives, even when things are happening that we don’t understand the reason for, or things that are difficult for us. Although I personally like to feel like I am in control of my life, I have to be reminded sometimes that not everything is up to me, and I have to have faith and trust in God that things happen for a reason. Although we’ve had many family experiences in the last few years since we were married that we didn’t really understand the reason for at the time, and others that seemed like they were very difficult to go through at the time. But I’ve begun to realize that most of these things happen for a reason, especially through hindsight, and this realization has helped me to have faith when things come along that are difficult that there is a reason for them to happen in our lives, and that things will turn out alright if we endure as best we can.

For example, when my husband started applying to medical schools all over the country, he applied to a range of schools – including some that may have been difficult for him to get into, and others that should have been relatively easy to be accepted to. Since he had good grades, we were both a little surprised when he was only accepted to one of the schools – a school in Wisconsin (which we hadn’t really seriously considered when applying, only because we knew very little about any of the Midwestern states). So we ended up in Milwaukee for four years of medical school, and not only were we pleased with the quality of education my husband received and the many friendships we made while living there, but in our last year in Milwaukee our fourth son ended up having surgery the day after he was born and then staying in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) for 18 days. Looking back now, I believe that one of the biggest reasons for us to move to Milwaukee is that we happened to live minutes from the best pediatric hospital in the whole region.

There have been many other such experiences since then that have also helped me to see the Lord’s hand in our lives, even when we may not have understood the purpose of our struggles at the time. For instance, one thing that I gained from that long, very emotional stay with our baby in the NICU was the realization that even though it was probably the most difficult trial of my life as yet, I did not question my faith in God – although it was incredibly difficult for me to get through those long days at the hospital, it was also very comforting for me to realize that my faith could get me through it.

At another time we had a car that was having serious problems – the battery would die after only leaving the car doors open long enough to get the children out of the car, or we would be driving and we’d stop at an intersection only to have the car die in the middle of the road. We were told by a number of different mechanics who looked at our car that something was draining the battery, but no one could figure out what the problem was, and several of them suggested that we needed to sell the car. But we could not afford a new car, and we didn’t feel like we could sell the car to anyone else in good conscience. Our prayers were answered in a very unexpected way when our car was parked (and no one was in it), and a parked semi truck rolled into the car, causing it to be totaled,which provided us with enough money to put towards purchasing another car that was much more dependable.

And the most recent example that I have seen of the Lord’s hand in our lives is when our fifth baby was hospitalized for 5 days when he was only 5 weeks old. We were glad when he made a relatively quick recovery, but his hospital stay couldn’t have come at a less convenient time (not that hospital trips are ever very convenient), because we had planned a trip across the country to look for a house where we would be moving in upstate New York. We not only had to make new flight and babysitter arrangements, but we had been preparing for months by researching homes for sale. We had to postpone the trip for several weeks, which meant that we also had to start over on all our house-hunting research because many of the houses we had previously looked into were no longer available. We had never bought a house before, and we were already nervous about the whole process, so this only added to the stress. When we went on our house-hunting trip a few weeks later we were glad to find a house that we liked on our first day of searching, and we made an offer that was accepted on the second day of our trip. We noticed later that this house was not put up on the market until after the date that our original trip had been planned for. We were able to move into the house that summer, and it has been a good home for our family since then.

Because we can see these examples in our lives of the part that Heavenly Father plays in our lives – how there is often a reason for our trials, even if we can’t see it at the time – I believe that it helps me not to question the reasons why difficult things happen in our lives, try to endure the trials, and trust in the Lord that there is a reason for them.