Epi…STAT!

I found myself in an all-too-familiar situation.  My anxiety was up.  My senses were heightened.  My heart was beating faster.  Each time I swallowed my throat felt tighter and tighter.

The situation:  An allergic reaction.

Food allergies are a real thing to me.  Perhaps you or someone you know and love has a food allergy.  He or she may have to refrain from eating some of their favorite foods, they may have to pay close attention to food labels, or they may have to carry emergency medications with them.  He or she may have no choice as their health depends on being prepared.

After a few too many close encounters, a recent allergic reaction landed me in the emergency room.  After the initial meds did not work and with my throat getting tighter by the second, my husband and I knew we needed to act fast.

Use the Epi-pen.

It was a moment in which life flashed before me.  And not in a good way.  A moment in which anxiety, mixed with medication side effects, left me shaken and uncertain.  A loss of control in more ways than one.

When we lose control over our lives it all becomes so shaky.  Fear, anxiety, endless worry - it all starts to creep in.  Tactics the enemy tries to use to pull us further away from God.  Zapping what faith we had left.

After three separate trips to the emergency department and three separate uses of the emergency epi-pen, I felt I didn’t have anything left.  The two-week period had been taxing, to say the least.  I was exhausted.  Scared.  Nervous.  But above all of that, I was thankful.  Thankful for life.  Thankful for all of the ways God provided.  People, resources, medications, and encouragement all at the right time and the right moment.

Isn’t that how God always works, though?  God is always right on time, preparing and providing for us in every season of life.  We are never alone, God is always right here with us.

This moment, well moments, have humbled me.  Brought me a new awareness of life and breath.  A new realization of the importance of fighting.  Fighting for the life God has given me, fighting through any anxieties or worries, and fighting to share the love of Jesus with those around me.

Humbled, I found myself back in one of the most well-known stories in the Bible.  Jesus and his disciples were in a boat on a lake when a terrible storm came up.  Because of the storm, there was fear and uncertainty.  We don’t know how bad this storm truly was, but I wouldn’t want to be out on any body of water with thunder and lightning.  Here is the situation as told by Matthew.

Matthew 8:23-27 - New International Version

23 Then he got into the boat and his disciples followed him. 24 Suddenly a furious storm came up on the lake, so that the waves swept over the boat. But Jesus was sleeping. 25 The disciples went and woke him, saying, “Lord, save us! We’re going to drown!”

26 He replied, “You of little faith, why are you so afraid?” Then he got up and rebuked the winds and the waves, and it was completely calm.

27 The men were amazed and asked, “What kind of man is this? Even the winds and the waves obey him!”

I don’t want Jesus to say to me - “You of little faith.”  Yet if I’m honest my faith is prone to waver like the winds that come and go.  I’m comforted to know that God loves me so much - on my good days and on the days where my faith is shaken.  The same is true for you today, no matter what you are facing.

God is in the business of making all things new.  He turns our ashes into such beauty.  He is always fighting for us in this life.  This gives me hope even in the difficult and scary moments of life.  Hope that no matter what I may face, God is enough.

Isaiah 43: 18-19 - New International Version

18 “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past.

19 See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness

    and streams in the wasteland.