On the second day my husband was in the hospital, I entered the elevator in the lobby to go up to the room again. I had been in my car crying, I was overly emotional, and to be honest, scared. Larry has been many places throughout his Army career that were dangerous, including war, and we’ve had some very dramatic movie moments. Still, I have never been so scared of losing him as I was at midnight when they wheeled him away to emergency surgery. I sat in the large, empty waiting area, hysterical and praying. I called my sister, who is a medical coder, and knows a lot about many different medical conditions, in hopes she’d alleviate some of my fears. Instead, she and my brother-in-law hit record speed in making it to the hospital. After that, I simply couldn’t shake the fear I felt.
The moment I stepped onto the elevator on that second day, I noticed an older couple already there. The woman saw I had been crying and asked if I was okay. I replied that yes, I was, and even if I wasn’t, I trust that God is in control. She appeared concerned as she said that I appeared to be a very intelligent woman, which I assumed she meant because I placed my trust in God. She put her hand over the hand of the man standing next to her, whom I assumed was her husband, and said that they hoped one day I could learn to rely on my own intelligence, and he nodded in agreement. She continued that they’d be shocked to see what I could accomplish, if I gave up the crutch I was raised to have of believing in a God that is not real.
I laughed slightly, especially considering the praise and worship session I’d just had in my car, and without much thought explained that I wasn’t raised to believe in God, my dad was agnostic, and added that without God I can pretty much run down how many things I could accomplish. I could find myself depressed at seven years old, trying to commit suicide. I could accomplish failing the third grade, pretty much making Ds and Fs throughout my entire school career. I could accomplish hurting people without guilt by being self-serving and rude, and a varied sort of other negative underachievements.
However, I continued that with God, my negatives were turned to positives in proof of how much God uses the willing, not the intelligent. How, over the last thirty years, I’ve spoken to thousands of women about not only loving who they are but also that they should encourage other women to love themselves as well, regardless of the world’s standard of beauty or intellect. I’ve accomplished serving military families and nonprofits in aid to healing and living a happier life. I’m an accomplished business person, a published author of eleven books, a publisher of ten times that many for other people, and I have since accomplished achieving four degrees.
But … in all of those accomplishments I’ve achieved after knowing God, none compare to actually knowing Him. Also, considering all that He has used me for, with how unintelligent and useless I thought I was as a young person, I humbly know one thing for sure, my God IS unreal.
Incredibly, supernaturally, wonderfully unreal.
I left that elevator knowing God had given me all of those words, likely to simply remind me of all that HE has done in my life, And, yes, while fear will likely creep in, it simply aids in building my faith that God is bigger than what I feel.
And that he uses us despite it all, if we are willing.