It Escaped My Notice

I haven't slept well since moving here. I don't know if it's the fact that I am now on the wrong side of the bed, or that we have to run the heater because it is SO COLD, or that I have started drinking hot tea in the evenings because it is SO COLD, or maybe the time zone change is still bugging me. I lay in bed at night for a long time before falling asleep. Last night, as I lay there thinking, it hit me. December 29th came and went this year without me noticing. At first I was proud of myself. I'm moving on, it doesn't consume me like in the first months and years. It has been five years now, you know. But then I started to cry. I didn't really know why, but I was mad that I had forgotten it. I felt like I had missed something really important, like forgetting my own birthday or something.

December 29 has become a 'signpost' day for me. Long long ago, I heard a sermon about signpost moments or events - things that happen in your life that alter it forever, change your course, and point you without question to God. Just like in the Bible in Joshua. In Chapter 4 the Israelites are crossing the Jordan River to finally enter the land that God had promised to them. They were instructed to take stones from the river, one for each tribe. These weren't little skipping stones, these were more like massive chunks of rock, so big they were instructed to lift them to their shoulders to carry them. These twelve stones were then set up as a reminder to future generations of what God had accomplished. This is from Joshua 4: 20-24:

And Joshua set up at Gilgal the twelve stones they had taken out of the Jordan. ²¹ He said to the Israelites, "In the future when your descendants ask their fathers, 'What do these stones mean?' ²² tell them, 'Israel crossed the Jordan on dry ground.' ²³ For the LORD your God dried up the Jordan before you until you had crossed over. The LORD your God did to the Jordan just what he had done to the Red Sea when he dried it up before us until we had crossed over. ²⁴ He did this so that all the peoples of the earth might know that the hand of the LORD is powerful and so that you might always fear the LORD your God."

This is a signpost. It clearly points to God's hand at work. And so is December 29th in my life. That day I was told that my son had cancer. We learned that we were moments away from losing him. We began an immediate three year long battle. While that was a moment of fear, there was a supernatural peace that also came in that moment. I knew that my life would be altered forever, but I also knew that ultimately God was sovereign, even when I didn't understand.

Now I stand on the other side. If you look at us now, you would never know anything happened. We look normal, Carson looks healthy (and is healthy), I don't freak out as bad when one of the boys get sick (and I don't break down in tears when someone in a drive-thru window is mean to me); we survived. But that is not to our credit. "The hand of the Lord is powerful." This was not a small skipping stone we were asked to carry out of the river, it was a massive chunk of hurt and sadness, a feeling of helplessness for our child. "He did this so that all the peoples of the earth might know that the hand of the LORD is powerful and so that you might always fear the LORD your God." December 29th is now a day to celebrate what God did in the life of our son and our family. A signpost that will always point us back to Him.