Tag: trouble

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Trusting God When Life Doesn’t Make Sense

How many times have I asked the question; ‘This just doesn’t make sense God?’ Why is this happening to me, to us? What is it you are trying to teach me? What is your purpose? No good can come from this, can it? I have travelled a long, hard road to get where I am today and even today, I stumble and fall, but I know I have to get up again. For the most part, I have learned to let go and to just trust God. Now, is that easy to do? Not at all, it is something I have yet to master, but everyday I’m learning. Taking your life, your family and just giving it all over to God is the hardest thing in the world to do; especially when you have a personality like mine, whereby I have to be in control of my life at all times.

But then trouble comes, life changes and you find yourself totally out of control, life is happening and you are not pulling the strings. Your perfectly controlled world falls apart. And you realize you are not in control at all! It is just terrifying. But yet God is speaking, in that still small voice; ‘trust me even when it’s not making sense!’

I guess you can say it all started back in March 23, 2008, when my Dad died. Why God? It didn’t make sense. I had not come to the place in my relationship with God, that my Dad did. He was diagnosed with stage four liver cancer and was given weeks to live. Our world, our family was loosing the one thing that held us all together. It made no sense! But Dad didn’t look at it like that, to him it made total sense. Either way he looked at it, he was not going to loose this battle. His faith and trust in God was unmovable. He said, ‘I have two options; I will walk out of this hospital an healed man or I will walk those streets of gold and find everlasting peace (paraphrased).’ Well he didn’t loose his battle with cancer, he is now present with the Lord; cancer free! It now makes total sense; death as lost it’s sting. Death is not the end, but the beginning.

Then on July 8, 2008 trouble knocked on our door once again. This is a door I did not want to open, it made no sense. After my Dad’s passing, Lisa and I decided that we wanted to have a baby, maybe even a boy; to carry on the ‘Tucker’ name, a legacy that my father would have been so proud of. So over the next few months we became pregnant and to make a long story short, only to be told at the ER that our baby didn’t make it after a ruptured ectopic pregnancy. The moment the doctor spoke those words, ‘our baby didn’t make it’; our world fell apart and God this did not make sense! How could it? Our baby was gone! We felt totally empty, alone, in shock and filled with grief.

After months of grieving the loss of our baby, we decided to try again. This time it did ‘not’ happen. But why not? This made no sense! We were told our only hope would be IVF; In Vitro Fertilization. So being so determined; IVF it was. And once the procedure was complete, we were pregnant again. On March 14,2011 we were blessed with a bouncing baby boy, Logan Kennedy Tucker. He’s now eight years old and hasn’t stopped bouncing since, thank God!

Life was going fairly smoothly and we were enjoying the privilege of being parents. But then around six months after Logan’s birth, trouble knocks again. There is no truer verse of scripture then the one found in John 16:33, ‘ In this world you will have trouble.’ Little did I realize just how much. I started having symptoms of depression; couldn’t sleep, loss of appetite, anxious, sadness, uncontrollable emotion, lost of interest in things I once loved to do, isolation. Before long I was in the depths of despair, a total mental and physical shut down. Why is this happening now? I should be happy, life was at it’s best; I had it all. This just doesn’t make sense. I was diagnosed with severe chronic depression and anxiety disorder. Talk about loosing control of your life, it was totally out of control. I could not work anymore and loss my will to live, I hit rock bottom and could not climb my way back to the life I had. God this doesn’t make sense. God I’m talking to you! Are you listening?

Then in the midst of all my darkness, God sent us an angel of light, a miracle, no IVF, a beautiful baby girl, Lauren Kennedy Tucker, born March 31,2013. I wasn’t improving by no means, as a last resort ECT (Electroconvulsive therapy) was my only option, my only hope. But much to my dismay, I did not respond to the treatment. Only getting worse, our lives were spinning out of control. God this doesn’t make sense.

Just when I thought life couldn’t get any tougher. On Lauren’s First birthday, she was diagnosed with spastic quadriplegic cerebral palsy. God this is not happening, this is making no sense. Here was a father struggling for his life and now our angel was given this life altering diagnosis. We were heartbroken and life once again was spinning out of control. We had control over nothing and when I say nothing, I mean nothing; we were at the mercy of God. We lost everything we owned. Now God, how am I supposed to trust you? But were there any alternatives, any better options? No, we were at the mercy of God, He was all we had and I realized later that He was all we needed. I had to learn to put my total trust in a God, who at the time, I could not feel or see. But that’s where faith comes in and I had to believe that my creator was in control and knows best. Isaiah 55:8-9 says, ‘For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.’ I had to come to a point where I realized that I was the created, but He was my Creator and He was in control, even when I wasn’t. Trust, I had to trust!

I have had much trouble, not unlike any of you who are reading this, no one is exempt. I felt like Job’s wife in Job2:9 when she said, ‘curse God, and die’. But Job said in Job 13:15 , ‘Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him.’ Many times I have felt like God had slayed me, God had forsaken me but I will still trust Him! God is not the problem but the answer. He is God, He knows what He’s doing, He’s in control and He loves us unconditionally. In my troubles He is refining me and teaching me what it is to trust Him even when it doesn’t make sense.

 

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“Our Story”

This blog  is taken from a speech I presented at Church just recently. I told my story there before entitled, A Broken Mind, which can still be found on our website at www.harrislisa72.com. But this blog isn’t just about me, it’s about my family; Lisa, Logan and Lauren. A family that is struggling and at times broken but I want to share with you the power of the human spirit to overcome any adversity with the help of God and a determination to never quit, never give up on hope. I have to make clear that this is not a onetime fix but a daily, conscious effort that requires a strength that is far beyond all human comprehension.

John 16:33                                                                                                                                                   I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. IN THIS WORLD YOU WILL HAVE TROUBLE. But take heart! I have overcome the world.

Our lives as been anything but trouble free, we have had more then our share of trials and tribulations. The storms of our lives have been many, there have been times when our ship was barely above water, we were sinking but I believe we were not in that ship alone. And that is why we are still riding out the storm. The storms may have beaten us down, exhausted us and at times left us for dead. But its these experiences and life altering traumas that have forced us to put our total dependence on God. For what we have experienced, are experiencing and what we are going to experience, we have to trust in the God of the impossible, the God that cannot fail, the God who has a plan for our lives; a plan we may not see at the moment.

I speak as a realist, not a pessimist. One thing I want to be is totally honest, totally real. I cannot say to you that we don’t question, doubt and have moments when we feel like we are somewhere wandering in the wilderness. But  we realize if we are going to survive this storm of life, we will have to put our trust and hope in the resurrected Christ. The Christ who died and rose again and today is seated at the right hand of the Father making intercession for us, what an amazing promise! That is what gives me hope, that is what gives us the strength to go on.

Let me just elaborate for a few moments on our not so ‘normal life’; by society’s standards. We don’t portray the perfect ‘facebook’, ‘cookie cutter life’. Let me take you back to my father’s death, my first real traumatic experience. He was a man of God, a man of faith and wisdom. Life certainly wasn’t always easy but he trusted God that tomorrow was going to be better, he never lost faith. When all nine children and Mom were gathered around his bed, he said before his passing that what truly mattered was right here in this room; his family and God; nothing else mattered when it came to material things. And right now I believe Dad is just ‘Gone Home’. He taught me what was important in life and what truly mattered in the end.

After  some months after his passing, Lisa and I had time to think and ponder over our own lives. After been married for eleven years with no children we thought about what Dad taught us on his deathbed and maybe we should have children too; just not nine! So the fun began, before long we were pregnant, although the doctors told Lisa she wasn’t. But Lisa knew she was; a Mother’s intuition. We decided to take a little vacation to the Dominican Republic. This trip would turn out to be one of the most traumatic experiences of our life. To make a long story short; while on the plane returning home, Lisa felt sick and decided to go back to the washroom on the plane. She never returned to her seat again, it ended with Lisa unconscious on the floor of the plane. Barely a pulse and turning blue; Lisa was dying. Once the plane landed, Lisa was rushed by ambulance to the nearest hospital, where we learned Lisa was hemorrhaging from an ectopic pregnancy and was taken for emergency surgery, where we lost our baby, Lisa lost  80% of her blood volume and was minutes from dying. This was the beginning of the storms of ‘our’ lives.

It was a long and traumatic journey back to real life. For months we grieved the loss of our baby in silence. We still so desperately wanted to have a baby but were told that would be impossible. But we never gave up, to fast forward; we went to Calgary for IVF; invetro fertilization and to defy all odds and with God’s intervention we were pregnant and seven months later we had a handsome baby boy who we named Logan. He was the joy of our lives.

But then when Logan was around a year old, I began to have severe symptoms of depression and anxiety. And that was where my story began and I was given a life altering diagnosis, that left me both mentally and physically disabled. And since that time until now I have struggled and still struggling to regain my life back. Then in the midst of all this trauma, we were miraculously blessed with a baby girl. She was certainly a light in the darkness; sunshine in the midst of all the rain. But then on her first birthday Lauren was diagnosed with spastic guadriplegia cerebral palsy- a life altering diagnosis for all of us. Our world fell apart. Trying to describe CP and what that involves is much like trying to describe my own diagnosis; both very complex and complicated. And to try and explain what either is, is impossible unless you experience it for yourself.

We were forced to make major life changes and had to move to Bay Roberts. And the storms have never ended, there’s been and will always be some unforseen battle and that is the reality. But in order to survive such traumatic and life changing experiences we have had to place our trust in God and believe that He is in the storm with us, He is in our ship and we will not sink. The minute we take our eyes off Him, it’s then we’ll sink. There are places I’ve seen His hand at work; in spite of all the trauma, trials and tribulations, there are so many miracles that present itself in our lives: 1. Our marriage as survived, struggling but surviving. Statistics show that majority of marriages don’t survive when faced with the ordeals that we have encountered. 2. The miracle that Lauren was conceived in the first place, when we were told it would be impossible for us to get pregnant on our own. 3. That Logan was fertilized in a petri dish and was viable to be implanted within Lisa’s womb and was successful; is not only amazing but a miracle. 4. That I can stand behind this pulpit, when I was in the acute stage of my illness I could barely stand at all. 5. That Lisa was capable of carrying a baby after the trauma she had experienced when we lost our first baby. So, I just want to say, ‘thank you Lord, for your blessings on us’.

Many times when discouragement knocks on our heart’s door and we find it difficult to see the light of day; we have to remind ourselves of God’s faithfulness. I don’t portray to be ‘Christian of the Year’ but I do say, ‘I’m a sinner saved by grace, so unworthy of the blood’. But yet He died for unworthy me, thank you just isn’t enough, His mercy rewrote my life. For without Calvary I would not be where I am today. So all the Glory belongs to Him. Thank you, thank you, thank you!