No Good Thing Does He Withhold - Part 2
"No good thing does the Lord withhold from those who walk uprightly." ~Psalm 84:11
In part 1, I shared about my struggle to believe the Word of God over my own feelings after the miscarriage of our 3rd child. Psalm 84:11 is one verse that took incredible amounts of faith for me to believe. After all, if God isn't holding anything good from me, then why in the world is He withholding children from us? It's in His Word that He says children are a blessing.
After walking in truth week after week, despite my feelings, it amazed me to see how my feelings began to align themselves with the Word of God. I began to ask God for what my heart was truly longing for: "the fullness of joy in His presence" (psalm 16:11). After a couple years of tragedies and sorrow, I simply longed for deep, profound joy. Yes, I hoped that God would allow our children to one day live outside the womb, but what I was really truly longing for was the joy I find in His presence alone. During this time, we began seeing a fertility specialist, as was suggested to us by our doctor considering this was our 3rd miscarriage now. Through that process I found that I did have a condition in my womb that I was born with that kept our babies from growing, and had a minor surgery to fix the problem.
After months of waiting on God and crying out to Him and seeking to walk in truth, I began to see change. My conversation-like relationship with God was being restored and I was walking in more joy day after day! Just to feel the nearness of God again was all I really wanted. Then in May, Jimmy and I left for our trip to Israel, and what a joy that was! The biggest surprise of our trip was to find out in Jerusalem that I was pregnant again!
Baby number 4 was here. My honest emotions on the front end weren't as full of excitement as you'd think. Although, after my surgery, I had no reason to think this one would end in miscarriage, I couldn't help but feel like I needed to guard my heart. I had such a mix of emotions: grieving that our 3rd baby wasn't here, excitement to be pregnant, fear of losing this one, and everything in between. But after a while, I began to trust God with this baby one day at time, celebrating what I had for the moment, and trusting Him for the future.
It was a couple months later that I had a random conversation with another artist's wife at a retreat who works in the hospital and sees many births throughout the year. After I explained to her the condition that I had, she began to share with me something that brought chills down my spine. She explained that, although unlikely, it was possible for me to have carried those first 3 babies to term in my condition. (Yes, I knew this, but I was more angered by that truth than comforted as I longed to have held those children). The outcome of such a pregnancy, she continued, is almost always tragic and sometimes fatal. Either the baby will suffocate in the 3rd trimester due to lack of space, it will have incredible deformities and problems from growing in a womb without enough space for it, or when the mother goes into labor, her uterus could rupture. When this happens, the mother could die from lack of blood loss, and if she does not die, will surely never have children again.
It took me a good week or two to completely soak in the gravity of what I just learned. Without knowing something was wrong, I was looking at facing some incredibly traumatic and fatal situations. And God knew this the whole time. Without the death of our 3rd child, we would have never went to see if anything was wrong. It was because of those 3 deaths, that God made a way for us to have a healthy pregnancy now, and for me to have more children in the future!
No good thing does He withhold from those who walk uprightly....
How gracious of My God to allow me to see behind the curtain to what He had known the whole time. He didn't owe it to me to show me the whole story. He has always asked me simply to trust Him. But He was gracious enough to let me know part of the reason why He allowed me to go through the suffering I did. He was making a way for a healthy baby now!
By the way, I am currently 16 weeks pregnant with no problems! I have had an absolutely perfect pregnancy with a very healthy baby! And I am thanking God every day for the little lives He allowed to go before this one and make way for it to be born, Lord willing, one day.
Back in December, in my darkest days, I remember telling God, "I believe one day I will look back on this season and thank you for doing what was best for me. I truly believe that. But right now, I'm pretty angry about this." I didn't understand then how such pain would ever be turned for good. But sure enough, now I do look back and say, "Thank you God for working this out for my good and Your Glory! You really do know what You're doing."
I'm not sure what your story is and what pain you've suffered. But will you choose to believe that God works all things out for the good of those who love Him and that He doesn't withhold any good thing from those who walk uprightly. You may not see how it is working for good until you are in God's presence when this life is over. But whether He reveals to you what He sees behind the scenes or not, He has called us to trust Him and believe His word! And sure enough, without fail, He has always been true to His Word in my life.
For now, I am trusting God and celebrating this little one He has made way for. Thank you, Yahweh, and may You get all the glory!