When Fear Returns, Faith Speaks.

Although I wrote yesterday, a year in review, I am currently working an 11 hour shift and felt like writing some more, so if it is repetitive, I apologize.

This season does not arrive quietly for me. The coughs, sneezes, the warnings about respiratory illness, the fact that I work in a Petri dish (school) and am exposed to all of it. The simple act of hearing someone clear their throat, all these things sometimes bring me back to last year. Like the title of a book I read a year or two ago, “The Body Keeps The Score”, my body remembers what my heart lived through. This whole week my back has been knotted and I’ve had crippling muscle spasms. I wonder if it’s related to last year at this time, being on my mind or just a coincidence.

Mike was critically ill and every breath felt like something we had to fight for. Even now, fear comes before reason has time to process. Trauma does that, it lingers, uninvited long after the danger has passed.

I have learned that faith doesn’t erase these reactions. Trusting God doesn’t mean my nervous system forgets what survival demanded. The hospital rooms, the machines, the endless watching and waiting. The prayers I whispered through exhaustion, they carved themselves into our story. The season still carries echos of alarms and uncertainty and pretending otherwise, would be dishonest.

Yet here I am, not healed of memory, but anchored in truth. Because while fear revisits, so does remembrance. I remember the days and nights that God sustained us when we felt we had nothing left. I remember the strength that only came from him. I remember the people God sent, the moments of peace that didn’t make sense and the way he carried us when standing on our own felt impossible.

I’ve learned that healing is not the absence of fear, it is learning where to lay it down. It is choosing again and again not to let last year’s trauma dictate this year’s faith. God did not abandon us then and he won’t abandon us now.

This is the year I refuse to let the reason define the story, instead I will testify. I will remember not only how close we came to losing everything, but how faithfully God held us through it. Fear may knock, but faith will answer.

My writing is not a denial of how hard it was at the beginning of last year, or most of the year for that matter. It is a declaration of who God proved himself to be. This is not a story of perfect healing or easy outcomes. It is a testimony of God who remains present in every fragile breath.

So although this season may still make my heart race. The coughs still may catch my attention, the warnings may stir memories my body hasn’t forgotten. They no longer get the final word, because I have seen what God can do in the darkest hours. I have watched him sustain us breath by breath, moment by moment, when the outcome was uncertain and the fear was relentless. The same season that once threatened to break us now stands as a witness to God’s faithfulness.

I don’t step into this year unaware of the risks of pretending the trauma is gone. I step into it anchored. Anchored in a God who was present then and remains present now. Fear may visit, but it doesn’t live here.

In the coming months, we will face more challenges. Finding rides to his appointments and dialysis continues to be a challenge, we are so blessed to have the consistent ones who have helped all year, but we are still in need of one every other Thursday morning so the burden doesn’t fall on the same person. He has a cardiologist appointment at the end of the month, to discuss whether they feel it will be safe for Mike to come off Plavix (blood thinner) temporarily so that he can get the back surgery he desperately needs. His back is still broken and what has healed has healed wrong. His hunch is so curved that it has compressed and collapsed the bottom of his lungs. Then of course, he will need to see the back surgeon and see if he, the cardiologist and the anesthesiologist all agree that Mike can endure surgery safely. 

So if you are still reading this, thank you and please pray for the above concerns we are facing. Please also keep my sister in prayer as she is having knee replacement surgery next week. ❤️

May you all have a blessed, happy and healthy 2026.