I have grown up knowing that God will never give me more than I can handle. Its a truth that I believe, and while its grown into a fairly cliche phrase, I think that’s because its true! People say it all the time because its true.
The last year or so of my life, its been said to me a lot. A LOT. By others, and by myself. God sees everything, and he will never give me more than I can handle. But I am learning that I’ve developed a bad association to it. While I don’t question the truth of the statement, I feel like it always comes up when I feel like I’m being dragged through the mud. Through the long road of illness last fall, I was MAXED. Or so I thought. Many of you know the timeline, I know, but I’ve got to lay it out. MONTHS of sickness went by, and I remember saying out loud, for the first time ever in my memory, that I was absolutely as close to the end of my rope as I had ever been. There was nowhere else to go. I was completely, literally finished. And then we lost Theo.
“Hailey, God knows what you can handle. You’ll get through this.”
And its true, so I desperately held on to that belief, and kept rolling. And God got me through it. It wasn’t pretty, but it happened, and we survived.
A few months after our miscarriage, we conceived again and I proceeded to roll through the sickest months of my pregnant years. Never before had I been so nauseous for so long. It was so difficult. But I was thankful for my pregnancy, and the symptoms reminding to me that my pregnancy was going forward. The days were still long, though.
“Hailey, God knows what you can handle. You’ll get through this.”
And I did.
And then we lost Jamin.
“Hailey, God knows what you can handle. You’ll get through this.”
And its true. I told myself over and over again. There was comfort there. I definitely understand why people who don’t believe in God think Christians sound crazy. I get it! We take comfort in something we cannot see or tangibly prove. We seem simply gullible, or maybe weak. But I believe strongly that God is truth, and I’m ok with people thinking I’m a little nutty. What’s so wrong in finding comfort, anyway?
While I don’t feel that my faith in God has suffered greatly through my losses, I can tell I have a bit of a bad taste in my mouth about this whole “God knows how much we can handle” business. Or I did, anyway. I’ve made jokes about it, that He and I clearly disagree on some of those amounts, but that He has the final say, and things like that. But in the recent weeks, I’ve had a small shift that I believe has begun some change in my heart. I’ve seen God’s mercy in a new way. I can see how this statement covers more surface than I thought it did.
Yes, when I feel like I’ve been hit by a bus, or would like to be, the truth is that He does know how much I can handle. But the flip side is that He also knows what I can’t handle. God is not a cruel God. He is merciful and compassionate. When things get really really hard, I sometimes forget that.
When I get all of my results more than a month before they were scheduled to arrive, God knows I couldn’t have handled waiting.
When I bleed for a full month and only get nine days off before I start bleeding again, God knows I need some schedule back in my life, because He and I both know that waiting in limbo is SO much worse for me.
When Brady hits a lull at work and money gets tight, He knows that the timing was bang on, and that I’d need Brady home for those weeks.
And when my baby is born at 16.5 weeks gestation, He KNOWS I needed to get that far into my pregnancy to find that joy and anticipation and excitement again after being SO nervous for the whole first trimester.
I’m going to do everything in my power to see things this way. Glass half full is always a better way to view life, and I’m disappointed that my first instinct is to think the glass is half empty. This doesn’t mean I can’t feel sad or angry or discouraged or however else I want to feel, but it brings into perspective that God sees all sides of the story. What we can handle, and what we can’t. He has the strongest radar for that than anyone else I know, and I have some pretty rockin’ people in my life.
I have a lot of thoughts on this, and I hope at least some of them came across somewhat clearly. If not, just know that my heart is continuing to heal. Seek and you will find, right? Well I’m seeking.