When I was on that operating table, I didn’t know that Sophie would be diagnosed with severe developmental delays at age 3. I didn’t know that she’d require a couple years of therapy. I didn’t know that I’d cry terrified tears about whether or not she’d ever be able to learn.
If only I had known, I’d have gone back in time to that operating room, looked into my doctor’s eyes and said, “Yes. Tie ’em up good.”
But I didn’t know.
THANK GOD, I didn’t know.
If I had known, I would not have, shortly before my daughter’s troubles were at their worst, gotten pregnant with my third child. (And, nope, I didn’t plan it.)
If I had only known, I wouldn’t have had a sweet newborn to cart along to Sophie’s therapy sessions, baby snuggles to help make my fears seem less big, or an extra beautiful soul in our home.
If I had only known, I wouldn’t have Jonah.
Thank God, I DIDN’T KNOW.
Sophie’s fourth year, the year she started knocking down her delays and hitting her goals like a prizefighter on steroids, was Jonah’s first year, a year that started out with fear mixed with joy and ended up with just…JOY. My girl proved what I always knew in my heart, that she could set anything she set her mind to. As her delays fell away, so did her mood swings, and she too became full of joy almost all the time.
Now, every time I look at my baby boy, now six-and-a-half and about to start first grade, my boy who had delays and needed therapies of his own, my boy who makes us LAUGH a million times a day, whose intelligence constantly amazes me, every time I see that child, I am reminded that I didn’t know—and that sometimes not knowing is a GIFT. I am reminded that I don’t always know what’s BEST for me.
And I am reminded of the One who does. God didn’t give me the knowledge of my future with Sophie while I was in that operating room because He knew I couldn’t handle knowing—He knew my emotions and self-doubt, my fear of doing hard things, my fear of not being in control, would have led me to make the wrong decision.
Not knowing. What a gift.
Thank God, I didn’t know.
***Editor’s note: I wrote this article last Friday August 4, 2017, and yesterday at church on Sunday August 6, the pastor used this quote in his sermon: “God will only give you what you would have asked for if you knew everything he knows.”
Tim Keller
Coincidence? I think not. God is so good to us.
