When Life Changes in a Heartbeat

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Your life can change in a heartbeat.

I am always struck by how quickly it can happen. The planned quiet evening that turns into a trip to the emergency room. The normal start of a work day that ends beside a hospital bed in another state. The routine checkup that results in major surgery. The announcement from an adult child that things were not as they seemed.

It can usually be boiled down to one sentence that caused your world to shift. Simple words, when strung together and uttered, that divide your life into before and after.

When it comes to suffering, we typically turn to the book of Job. This is, of course, a wonderful source of God’s sovereignty over our circumstances and his offering the comfort of himself rather than the answers Job originally sought.

But I am also struck by the lesser-discussed story of Habakkuk. Here we find an example of God giving warning of what he was going to do, and also including that it was going to be pretty awful. And yet, Habakkuk was still able to offer up praise for God’s goodness at the end.

What can we remember when our world shifts, and we have to find the strength to step into the uncharted after?

Take Your Feelings to God

Habakkuk had just been given the news that Judah was going to fall to the Babylonians. They were a brutal people, and the ancient world did not include international accountability for war crimes. His response to this was not, “Thanks for the update,” but an honest outpouring of his emotions.

We can fall into the trap by thinking God needs the professional, polished version of our words. God knows how we feel, and he knows the tangle of emotions we are experiencing. We can take those emotions safely to him, even if all we can say is, “I don’t understand.”

If You Don’t Know What to Do, Remember What You Know

Habakkuk then remembers what God has done in the past. His poetic language reflects on God’s powerful interventions. It brings to mind stories like the Exodus, when God acted mightily to rescue the Israelites from slavery from the Egyptians.

It is good for us to also reflect on God’s deliverance and faithfulness in the past. As the saying goes, we have thus far survived every one of our bad days. Although what we are facing now may be more difficult than anything we have faced before, we all have a story of God’s faithfulness during difficulty.

Remind Yourself Who Is in Control

The end of Habakkuk is one of the most beautiful parts of Scripture:

Though the fig tree does not bud
and there are no grapes on the vines,
though the olive crop fails
and the fields produce no food,
though there are no sheep in the pen
and no cattle in the stalls,
yet I will rejoice in the Lord,
I will be joyful in God my Savior.

The Sovereign Lord is my strength;
he makes my feet like the feet of a deer,
he enables me to tread on the heights.

Habakkuk 3:17-19

He is our strength, even through the impossible. May we all trust God with our befores and our afters.

I’d love to connect with you beyond the blog. You can find me on Youtube, Instagram, and Facebook, where I share more encouragement for women navigating faith and health. You can also sign up for my monthly newsletter.