Are you living by "what if" or "what is?"

Jennifer Rothschild lost her sight when she was 15 years old. She was a normal, active, healthy teenager who especially loved art and wanted to draw and paint when she grew up. One day she and a friend were painting on a large new white sheet for a field day event at school, and she noticed a lot of gray dust in one of the corners of the sheet. She tried to brush it away, but it wouldn't budge. Then she noticed some black marks in another corner of the sheet. When she complained to the friend about all the dirt and dust on this new sheet, her friend responded, "Jennifer, I don't know what you are talking about. She sheet is white." That was her first indication that something was wrong. Not long after this, her parents took her to an eye hospital where they did a number of tests that revealed that she had a disease of the retinas that would leave her completely blind.

Jennifer said that she and her parents drove home in stunned and devestated silence from the hospital that day. When she got home, there sat the upright piano her family had purchased several years earlier. She had taken piano lessons on and off so her ability was pretty limited. But though she could no longer see to read the music she sat down and began playing she had never played and never memorized. The song that flowed from her heart through her fingers is the song that still reverberates through her life and the dark places she goes through: the old protestant hymn "It is Well with my Soul."

When people asks her if she prays for healing, she responds that there are days where she cries out to God, "Lord, take it away." But generally she doesn't pray for healing. She knows that God is sovereign and He can do it if He chooses, but what she really prays for and what she needs most is contentment, "because if I don't learn contentment in the midst of these circumstances, then if in the mercy of God, He delivers me from it, I'll be grumpy about something else." How true that so many of us fail to redeem the difficulty in our lives, because we assume that we'd be content if our circumstances changed. If my finances improved, if my husband improved, if my children improved, if my job improved, if my home improved, if my health improved... But as Jennifer declared, "True contentment only comes in the midst of the difficult circumstances. Because God makes it well with your soul--not always with your circumstances."

One of the things Jennifer said she has learned as a woman navigating through the darkness of faith and blindness is that it doesn't have to be well with your circumstances for it to be well with your soul. We don't wait for our circumstances to change so that we can experience some level of contentment in our faith. Rather, we ask God to change us in the midst of our circumstances.

Boy that is a lesson I needed to be reminded of--I must daily ask God to teach me contentment right smack in the midst of whatever circumstances I am enduring or enjoying. I cannot choose my circumstances, but I can always choose my response. I can choose gratitude or grumpiness. I can choose faith or fear. I can choose resting in God's sovereignity or restlessness and anxiety. I can choose joy or joylessness. I can choose to enjoy the present, irreplaceable moments of my life each day or I can choose to be looking ahead in worry or behind in regret. O how many of those priceless moments have I missed, because I was mired in preoccupation with my circumstances or about ruminating over other moments that have already passed or that are yet to be!

Jennifer explained that as a blind young woman graduating from high school, the thing she most desperately craved was independence. Independence had been striped away from her at every level as a result of her blindness. So she decided to go to a college about 90 miles away from her house. On August 15 of 1982 she would be a college freshman, and "this seemed like the best idea ever--until August 14 at 3 in the afternoon." As she stood in the front yard of her house, she suddenly was filled with fear at the realization she would be away from home, away from help of any kind, away from all security. She didn't know anybody and wondered who would help her, how would she cross the busy streets--and on and on the fears assailed her. Her mom cried with her and told her she had to go, but she only needed to try it for 2 weeks. If she couldn't handle it, her mom and dad would come pick her up. Well, she loved it and she met her future husband in those first 2 weeks!

"For some of you, it's August 14th." We are looking at our future and it looks uncertain or frightening. "Much of the reason we hover in the front yard of our lives and it's always August 14th is because we are so dominated by our feelings...Fear is a legitimate emotion. But you should allow it to become for you an intuitive detective that holds the hand of God and walks you to Him." We don't walk by our feelings; we walk by faith.

How many of us are daily living our August 14's and saying, "what if?" What if my husband loses his job? What if my child can't handle college? What if our family can't handle this health crisis? What if..... You fill in the blank. What if I really do trust God more than my feelings? As Jennifer declared, "What if is the language of fear and speculation." If we want to be people who truly follow God and walk by faith, we need to stop speaking "what if" and start speaking "what is." And here's "what is: God who called you is faithful, the God who in Isaiah 45 says I will give you treasures in darkness."

The bottom line: I want to be a woman who stops saying "what if" and starts saying "what is--God is faithful and I choose to trust Him more than I trust my feelings." How we all need to remind ourselves daily of this truth! We have to counsel our hearts, for our feelings are such variable, unreliable, wobbly things! But God is changeless and eternal and true and good and great, and I can trust Him with my families lives and with my friends lives and with all in this world that can seem so hopeless.

So today, when those "what if's" assail you, choose to counsel your heart to say "what is" and remind yourselves of the faithfulness of Your almighty, all sovereign, all glorious Lord! He has brought you this far--He will not let you down now...or next week...or next year. Even when we don't understand what He's doing, we can trust His heart and choose to speak the truth of "what is" as we walk by faith and not by feelings. To Him be all the glory.