“Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him” (Job 13:15).

            “The best laid plans…” How many times have I quoted that, and then been stunned when life happens and my plans are derailed?

            My husband and I had just returned from a short trip and settled down to watch the Lakers game when I noticed a message on my cell phone. I hadn’t heard it ring, but apparently our second son, Michael, had called. We spoke to him earlier that day, so I assumed he was checking to see if we’d made it home safely.

            I called and nearly collapsed when I heard his voice. Instead of his usual cheery greeting of “Hi, Mom,” I heard him gasping for air. “I can’t breathe,” he managed to say. Then I heard something about an accident and the words, “I think I’m going to die.” I begged him to tell me what happened, where he was, if he’d called 9-1-1, but he couldn’t answer. Then the phone went dead.

            Does it get any worse than that? My husband and I threw things in a suitcase and hit the road, praying all the way. By the time we made the 90-minute drive, we’d managed to discover that Michael had been riding his mountain bike alone, far from a well-traveled trail, and had taken a terrible fall. He didn’t remember calling me, but somehow my return call to him pulled him from unconsciousness. The GPS on his cell phone enabled a helicopter to locate him, but not before he spent several hours lying injured and suffering under the hot desert sun. He was airlifted to emergency with seven broken ribs, a broken shoulder, collapsed lung, and severely dehydrated. But he’s going to make it, and we’re all rejoicing in that.

            And if they hadn’t found him and he wasn’t going to make it, would we still be rejoicing? We would be grieving, certainly…but still praising God? There’s nothing like a crisis with one of our children to put things in such perfect perspective, is there? I’m relatively certain I can truthfully say with Job, “Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him.” But “Though He slay my child…?” A bit tougher, isn’t it?

            God knows our weaknesses and frailties, our failures and faults, and He loves us anyway. He understands our struggles to release our loved ones into His care, so much so that He alone gives us the strength to do it. It is only in clinging to Him that we are able to say, regardless of what happens, “yet will I trust Him.” For ultimately, whatever our best-laid plans, that’s really all that matters.

            Praying for you, dear ones, that whatever comes your way, you will cling to Him and rejoice as you declare, “Yet will I trust Him!”

•  Where was God when the tragedy struck? Right where He always is—on His throne.
• If God loves me, why is my life falling apart? Because He’s God and infinitely wiser and more loving than we are. If we can’t make sense out of a situation, it’s because our understanding is limited, not because God is failing to do the right thing. Whatever He does is right, simply because He is God!
• I’ve been praying and pleading and fasting; why hasn’t God answered? Perhaps He has and we just didn’t hear or understand Him. Or perhaps because God is timeless but we are trapped in time, we just haven’t arrived at His answer yet. Because He is God, we can trust that His timing and His answers are always right.