Is God’s Timing Perfect?
Is God’s timing really perfect? This is one of the many questions I repeatedly asked, while waiting for God to answer my prayer of becoming a mom.
I have followed Christ my entire life. I continue to choose Him every day by God’s grace. I believe in Him. This belief is the core of who I am.
But during the past five years, this belief has been through the fire. My husband and I dealt with countless extended family issues, including mental health challenges, broken relationships, and unhealthy dynamics. We ourselves struggled with sexuality, decisions, and fatigue from music ministry travel. Personally, I struggled through deep hurt, bitterness, depression, and anger. Despite some breakthroughs it felt like each year just kept getting worse, longer, harder, darker.
Then to top it all off, infertility. There were days, months, and years of waiting. This was excruciating. During this time, my beliefs were laid out on an operating table. Pulled apart, examined, exposed.
Is God good? Does He love me? Am I just a means to an end—a person only created to love and serve others? What about me, God? What about my desires?
Time had a way of exposing me. God had a way of exposing me—in His time. Especially the parts of me that needed to be examined and cleaned out by Him.
People all around us got pregnant, had babies, then had two babies, and ultimately moved forward with their lives. And here we were. Stuck.
We saw doctors. I had surgery. And still we waited.
Reading scripture and being reminded of truth turned depressing instead of hopeful —like God was withholding a gift from us that He gave to others freely. Our situation seemed to be a never-ending place of pain. Despair crept into my heart: things would never change.
With encouragement from my husband, I began seeing a counselor weekly in May of 2020. I found that she helped me engage my pain with curiosity instead of shamefully sweeping it under the rug. With her help I started prayerfully asking different questions. What feelings am I experiencing? Are these feelings revealing something deeper? Where is God in this and what does His face look like when I feel these things? How is He responding to me in this moment? In asking these questions, I found myself encountering God with my imagination and He met me there.
In one of my counseling sessions, God brought to mind a picture of Himself, driving me around in a car. I am curled up in the back seat. I feel His hand reach back and touch mine, reminding me that He is with me. I glance up at the rearview mirror and see His eyes lock with mine. He sees me. He knows me. He loves me. I feel safe, and then, even adventurous. I want to go where He goes. I want to do what He does. I want what He wants for me.
Through many experiences like this, God invited me to see Him differently, and more rightly. The truths of the Bible that were hard to digest in words were being given to me in a fresh, loving, gentle, and kind way.
On July 22nd of this year, I went in for my annual physical. Not only was I due for this exam but I also needed to get a lump in my breast checked out that had been there for over six months. Because my period had not yet started that month, and I knew the doctor would ask, I took a pregnancy test that morning.
It was POSITIVE! After two and a half years, this was our first positive test. It was surprising and joyous! Two weeks later, I went in for a seven-week ultrasound on August 5th—the pregnancy was viable! Oh, how we had prayed for this! Thanks be to God!
The following day I followed through with the physician’s recommendation to have mammogram imaging completed on the lump in my left breast. The images were extremely concerning to the radiologist, so I was scheduled for a needle biopsy on August 17th. The results came back on Friday, the 20th of August: invasive carcinoma of no special type. In other words, breast cancer.
So here we were finally pregnant and yet, cancer. How could this be God’s perfect timing? Had I delayed so long in getting the lump checked that it was going to ruin this pregnancy that God had given us? I felt ashamed. Heartbroken. Confused. And, somehow prepared. Ready to face whatever came my way in God’s strength.
It was not until time had passed that I could see the years of pain and longing as a means for God operating on my heart. The lies and wrong beliefs were slowly uprooted and replaced with truth: that God is good, He does love me, and that He does have plans for me—plans to give me a hope and a future. This hope is not based on
my current circumstances. It is based on the knowledge of these truths that He has instilled in my heart. He is my hope and my future.
And oh, how God has already proved His lovingkindness! Here are just a few of the ways He has blessed us and revealed to us His timing in this situation:
We live in a time and place where I have access to amazing cancer treatment options.
My surgical oncologist specializes in breast cancer during pregnancy. If I had gotten the lump checked out sooner, our chances of getting pregnant at all would have been much worse.
Chemotherapy does not have adverse affects on the baby.
Breast cancer patients who are pregnant are often spared from the extremely debilitating chemotherapy symptoms.
God has used the people we have met from all over the country to bless us in amazing ways.
I am more emotionally and spiritually healthy as I become a mom.
We are currently 33 weeks pregnant with a healthy baby girl!
When I look in the rearview mirror, my hope rests in my Heavenly Father’s eyes looking back at me. His loving gaze provides me what I need in each moment. I do not know what the future holds, but I know that the God who holds all time invites me to curiously explore each moment with Him. I no longer see time as a mocking tormentor but as a tool that God lovingly uses for my good, and His glory. And I am more confident than ever that with Him in the driver’s seat, I can trust that His timing really is perfect.
Do you find yourself in a period of waiting? There is nothing I can do or say that will fulfill the longing of your heart. But I am certain that our Heavenly Father is ready and willing to give you Himself. I encourage you to seek Him, engage Him with your curiosity, and let Him meet you there.
Love, Chelsea
