I’ve been sitting long and quiet this morning, trying to figure out whether or not to share something out loud. It feels extra vulnerable, which is why it’s a fight to wrap it into words, but also why I need to.

 

For months, I have been dealing with suffocating anxiety over a health issue in my life.  Health stuff is a powerful trigger for me. My friends and sweetheart have extended endless kindness, compassion and patience as I’ve cried my way through sleepless nights, but also refused to get actual answers to the issue I was facing. All the worry finally culminated in a trip to Portland to see a friend of mine who is a doctor, who ordered the tests I had been avoiding since September.  He ended our visit with one powerful sentence that keeps reverberating in my head:  “The one and only question we need to answer today, Bo, is: Do you trust God with your whole life?”  The night before the tests, I tossed and turned in my bed, writing a story in my head of the disaster that awaited inside those results.  Just as I considered the idea of canceling the appointment in the morning, I heard a tiny voice in my spirit say, “That test is the only door out of the life you’re living now.”  And I knew the voice was right. I loathe living in fear and taking a hard run at that door was the only way out, even if I faced something difficult on the other side.  I had to reluctantly agree that any reality was a better option than living in the unknown, because real grace meets us in our real stories.

 

Results: I had the tests and I am healthy and fine. I’m trying not to focus on the many minutes  and months I lost to anxiety, but it’s tough  – because the door was there the whole time and I was afraid to use it.  I wasted so much energy and sacrificed so much peace.

 

I share this only because I have run into so many people this week who are dealing with the very same issue, packaged up in different circumstances.  Sometimes a situation seems so complex that everything looks like a house of mirrors, but I believe there is always a door.  It may not be the final door to freedom, but it is the next door in the process.  If you’re locked up in a life filled with fear or doubt or confusion, the one and only question you need to answer immediately is: Do you trust God with your whole life?  And the only thing you need to do is take a real hard run at that door.

 

With hope and courage,

 

Bo

 

7 Comments

  1. Thank You~!

  2. The biggest lesson I learned from my cancer was that the hidden things belong to God, and He can be trusted. He never let me down. Not even once. I felt his presence in a way that has forever changed me. Faith, hope, trust, love. So much love, so many blessings

  3. This will be the next book.

  4. Have been a follower for a few years and for whatever reason you crossed my mind just yesterday and I wondered when I’d see another post from you… and here it is. Thank you for sharing; your words bless me ever,time. Hugs from Texas.

  5. Marnette Sprouse

    Your courage to share this..something so deeply vulnerable. Thank you.
    Taking a “…good hard run at that door….”!!

  6. ❤️ Blessings to you, Bo!

  7. I can’t possibly articulate how desperately I needed to hear this. I’m so thankful that your health scare was just a scare. Thank you for sharing your thoughts. Saturday I was lost in such darkness over feeling hopeless in my current situation I wanted to run out on my life. I know you are right and I need to embrace that truth and trust Him to bring me to the next place in my process without drowning in fear.