I was never one that had a life verse. That is, until I had survived cancer 10 years ago. Cancer did way more than wipe away parts of my body, leave me pretty beat up (physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually, and financially), and forced me to stare death square in the nose. Cancer gave me a completely different perspective on life. But in a way, I felt like I had to start over. Everything I thought about life suddenly seemed wrong, or at least I had done it all wrong.

My first inclination was to take life by the throat, run into oblivion, and act out the words of the Tim McGraw song “Live Like You Were Dying.” But instead of sky diving, I decided to return to school. I got my bachelor’s and master’s degree in half the time (I went double full-time) and did it with a 4.0. Then I crashed and burned. My trauma (pre-cancer and post-cancer) had caught up to me.

Here, I found my life verse amid a lot of loss (mostly with my self-identity).

Watch! I’m about to carry out something new!
And now it’s springing up – don’t you recognize it?
I’m making a way in the wilderness and paths in the desert (Isaiah 43:19 ISV)

I had no idea how much that scripture would become core to the next chapter God would write in my life over this past decade. The path I was walking was INTO the wilderness and desert and I realized this year that I was in the barrenness of the wasteland. There was no water here, no relief, and I was alone. Utterly alone (or so I thought).

If I hadn’t known the goodness of God before this, I would have thought that I was left here to die.

I remember a moment (of many) when I was face down on the carpet of my home office somewhere around 2 am. The sounds coming out of my body were a groaning of grief I had never heard escape me until this point.

It was there He met me in my wasteland. I remember hearing Him whisper “I’m doing something new. Do you see it yet? I’m making a way, where there seems to be no way.”

I didn’t understand. I am not sure I even wanted to. I was dry, starving, thirsty, and spiritually emaciated.

God has always used the circumstances of my life to help others. And it always seemed to be when I was smack dab in the middle of going through it, too. I would have people placed in front of me who had to hear my story, even the very raw and broken parts of it so that they could see that God was also making a way in their wilderness.

I had no problem sharing with those going through trauma that God indeed wastes nothing and makes beauty from what is burned beyond recognition. But did I have faith that He could do it for me, too?

I remember the weekend of my diagnosis 10 years ago. I was told on a Friday that I had a large mass and they were sure it was cancer. I had an MRI scheduled on a Monday. So, I had to sit with the word cancer for that entire weekend. “Grade 4 out of 5,” “7.5 cm mass,” and “not sure if it has spread,” were the phrases that kept playing over and over in my mind. I had to wrestle with the fact that I didn’t know if I would live or die.

Very few times did God wake me up in the middle of the night with something specific, but this particular weekend He did. All I heard were the words “the arrow that flies by day…” I knew it was in the Psalms. I rushed to my Bible and opened up to Psalm 91.

Surely he will save you from the fowler’s snare
and from the deadly pestilence.

He will cover you with his feathers,
and under his wings you will find refuge;
his faithfulness will be your shield and rampart.

You will not fear the terror of night,
nor the arrow that flies by day,
nor the pestilence that stalks in the darkness,
nor the plague that destroys at midday.

A thousand may fall at your side,
ten thousand at your right hand,
but it will not come near you.

I held onto those words. I wrote them on index cards and pasted them all over my house (on doorways, above light switches, on my bathroom mirror).

Little did I know I would have another wilderness experience to come. As I’ve journeyed through this new wilderness in the present, I yet again had this same thing happen to me. This time, Psalm 37. These are the parts of the chapter which have been a promise to me:

Trust in the LORD and do good; dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture.
Take delight in the LORD, and he will give you the desires of your heart.
Commit your way to the LORD; trust in him and he will do this:
He will make your righteous reward shine like the dawn, your vindication like the noonday sun.
Consider the blameless, observe the upright; a future awaits those who seek peace.
The salvation of the righteous comes from the LORD; he is their stronghold in time of trouble.
The LORD helps them and delivers them; he delivers them from the wicked and saves them, because they take refuge in him.

I don’t know what’s next.
But as I often tell my clients – look back and see the faithfulness of God. If He has always made a way, He will keep doing so.
He wasn’t done with me 10 years ago, and He’s not done now.

He IS doing something new. I’m in the middle, and not yet on the other side to tell you how this turns out. But faith begins where our understanding ends and I know that the end result will be something beautiful – because that’s what He does.

You have allowed me to suffer much hardship, but you will restore me to life again and lift me up from the depths of the earth.
You will restore me to even greater honor and comfort me once again. (Psalm 71:20-21)