My brain caught up to me around 3am and suddenly I found myself awake and sobbing in bed. I got up hoping I wouldn\u2019t disturb my husband, probably the wrong choice. I fell to my knees on the living room floor and I prayed. The tears would not stop. I prayed for strength, I prayed for peace, and I prayed for clarity on our next steps. I asked God why, but not in the usual why is this happening to me. I wanted to understand what He was asking of us, how I could help to make good of the struggle He had placed in my path, I feared I was not strong enough to do what He was asking me. I opened my Bible to a verse that I had been repeating to myself all week. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In late January during my Bible study we were all asked to share a verse, I cannot remember the exact context or what the verse was supposed to mean to us but one of the ladies shared a verse from Exodus. As the Israelites stood with the sea to their backs and the Egyptians fast approaching, they started to panic, and Moses told them, \u201cThe Lord will fight for you, you need only to be still\u201d (Exodus 14:14)<\/strong>. The verse struck me in that moment and came to me again many times over the next month. God was speaking to me in those moments, preparing me for what was to come, but I did not know it yet. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I read the passage\u00a0out loud\u00a0and I started to repeat\u00a0the words \u201cyou are not welcome here, you are not welcome in my home, you are not welcome in my family.\u201d\u00a0I was talking to the devil.\u00a0That probably sounds extreme to a lot of people, but just\u00a0the week prior\u00a0in my mom\u2019s group we\u00a0talked\u00a0about\u00a0how the devil\u00a0is\u00a0strategic,\u00a0he will come for the thing that is most likely to break you down. We were all asked to\u00a0answer the question\u00a0\u201cIf you were Satan, how would you take you out?\u201d\u00a0My answer: \u201cI think mine would be my kids.\u00a0I\u2019ve\u00a0gotten better in the last year or so at accepting that they are a gift that God has given me to take care of for however long He has planned but they are\u00a0ultimately His. It has helped with my anxiety a\u00a0lot,\u00a0but I often wonder if my faith could\u00a0actually withstand<\/strong>\u00a0something happening to one of them.\u201d\u00a0That\u2019s\u00a0an exact text I sent just\u00a013 days\u00a0before our anatomy scan.\u00a0To be clear, I\u00a0am not saying\u00a0that this diagnosis came from the devil, but the fear I felt that night,\u00a0the fear\u00a0that\u00a0was starting to overtake my thoughts\u00a0and make me wonder if I was strong enough to handle this; that was certainly from him. So,\u00a0I told him\u00a0out loud\u00a0that he was not welcome in my home, and I said it repeatedly until I stopped crying,\u00a0until peace came over me,\u00a0and I could take a deep breath.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n My sister had sent me a song earlier that day that I had not listened to yet and for some reason I felt compelled to listen to it\u00a0in\u00a0that moment.\u00a0I\u00a0won\u2019t\u00a0say it was the wrong choice,\u00a0but it was certainly a choice. The tears\u00a0came\u00a0back,\u00a0music has the capacity to move me in a way that not much else can,\u00a0but the\u00a0tears felt\u00a0different this time.\u00a0Sadness, grieving, but not fear. \u201cWe\u2019re in for nasty weather,\u00a0and\u00a0I\u2019ll ride it out with you.\u201d<\/a> I held\u00a0my belly,\u00a0I rocked,\u00a0and I listened to these words.\u00a0I listened to it twice, I\u00a0said a prayer, and I went back to bed. I knew we had a rough road ahead\u00a0of\u00a0us,\u00a0but we could do it. We\u00a0could face the storm,\u00a0because\u00a0I knew that in my stillness the Lord was fighting for me.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" My brain caught up to me around 3am and suddenly I found myself awake and sobbing in bed. I got up hoping I wouldn\u2019t disturb my husband, probably the wrong choice. I fell to my knees on the living room floor and I prayed. The tears would not stop. I prayed for strength, I prayed for peace, and I prayed for clarity on our next steps. I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":272,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-267","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-howwegothere"],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bestillandbreatheblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bestillandbreatheblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bestillandbreatheblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bestillandbreatheblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bestillandbreatheblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=267"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/bestillandbreatheblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":273,"href":"https:\/\/bestillandbreatheblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267\/revisions\/273"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bestillandbreatheblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/272"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bestillandbreatheblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bestillandbreatheblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bestillandbreatheblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}