Saved From Fear

BY BETH DESEELHORST

In 2015 I went to the emergency room because I found I could hardly breathe. It took a major effort to walk from my living room chair to the kitchen sink. Something bad was going on. They discovered I had blood clots in both my lungs and admitted me.

The second day in, an uncertain fear struck me: might I really die? One of the nurses as much as told me this was a possibility. She thought the situation was more serious than I was apparently making it out to be.

A doctor came in and graciously explained to me how blood flows up from the legs (from where they thought the clots might have come) to the lungs, the heart, and all else up there. I thought of God making valves in our arteries so that the blood would keep going in the direction it should. I glanced out the window and saw a hummingbird, one of God’s most intriguing and beautiful creatures, drinking hyssop from a flower just the way he intended it to.

Maybe dying would be easier in the long run, I thought, because I would be eternally with God. Living would be harder, but only if I forget about Jesus and the Holy Spirit being with me and in me while here on earth. The intricacies of God’s designs and his purposes are so closely tied together. That’s when everything came crashing into focus.

I blurted out, “You’re talking about creation!”

The doctor blinked, startled, and simply said, “I’m a believer too.”

At Gesthemane, Jesus feared death. But His father showed him life and death and life again in a moment. For to God, a thousand years is as a day (2 Peter 3:8). And the Son of Man did the same for me, in the sense that I did not fear life on this earth, nor death, nor life again. Que sera, sera, was what I felt.

Don’t think this negated my desire to experience the everlasting peace and beauty of heaven, or my desire to finish out enough time on earth. Not at all. But Jesus in his humanity and sympathy knew what I needed.

This present earth will hurt us often and greatly, ultimately even to death. Jesus, because he was one of us, knows why we hurt and why we are afraid. Take one thing that hurts you from your history and pin it to the wall. Stare at it, cry at it, throw daggers at it. Do what you want with it. Then go kiss it and thank Jesus for getting you through it.

He knows what we’re feeling and thinking because he’s been there.