While I go forward in detailing the uneven trail we ventured on in 2024, I aim to express the opposing forces at work. To display God’s work through the hills and valleys.

• Mental health

It has been an adventure in itself watching my husband’s faith and experiences with God in his spiritual climb. It’s hard not to let the sparks from his growing fire alight anew the one in my own heart. To grow alongside him in faith and with renewed excitement for the Lord.

His newly found faith at the end of 2023 lead to his baptism in early 2024 and the kindling of his desire to serve God.

My struggle came as I saw how connected to God my husband became. How God spoke to him so clearly and distinctively. It roused a longing within me to hear God despite the cloudiness of my own mind. The feeling of falling behind drifted in and brought with it a battle of comparison and overthinking.

Through prayer, seeking and an altar call, in the rare quiet moments of my mind, God began speaking to me.

• Health

2024 marked the first major Canadian stadium Come Together event, one that my husband was quick to put his name forward to volunteer. My excitement to attend, to feel His presence and see God move was crushed by sharp pains in an early morning only a week before.

The result? An emergency surgery.

It was a struggle to accept all that I was going to have to miss: Come Together, a camping trip with our life group, my weekly equestrian lessons…

Oddly enough, another couple that was involved in the event were facing the same circumstances. Attemped barriers for this couple and my husband to serve fully.

As fall came and the weather slowly became colder, I was quick to catch colds among other health struggles.

My health seems to be a trending topic lately. It distracts my husband from continuing the work God has for him. How fitting a tactic when God has placed me by my husband’s side as a support and stabilizer. 

Yet, despite these adventures, God was there giving me strength. It was God’s peace in a time where my anxiety would normally fly off the roof with the idea of surgery, blood tests and IVs. It was seeing God work in a timely way when the surgery occured a couple hours before scheduled. It was in the kindness of the surgeon’s attempts at making me laugh in those moments in the operating room before it began. It was God teaching me to slow down in the aftermath. To assess priorities. To spend the time healing with Him and searching for Him.  

• Loss

To add to this, one or two weeks after my surgery, my family faced the loss of two loved ones with a short two week repreive in between.

God was there. Upholding us.

To use the words of a fellow church member, I’m still standing. What the enemy is using to deter, God is using for the good in sanctification. In character building.

I’m still standing with God’s grace.

 Grace & peace to you!

Jo