The Goodness of the Lord

A year ago yesterday, I was lying on the bed in the cabin that my husband and I share at the camp his family goes to every summer.  I was completely miserable for a few reasons, but mainly because I was so sick. I was hungry and nauseous and I had been for about two months. I knew I wasn’t pregnant—the test had come back negative—and I was on the last day of some medication a doctor had prescribed. She told me if I wasn’t feeling better by the last day of the medicine, I would probably need to go to the emergency room for a stomach scan. Aside from dreading the cost of going into the emergency room, I was sure they would either say it was nothing and I would feel stupid for going in, or I would find out I was actually dying.

Hoping for a momentary relief from my worries, I opened Facebook and began to scroll. There was a memory from nine years earlier, on July 30th, 2015, shortly before I moved back to China. It was a couple of verses from the end of Psalm 27 which reads:

“I am still confident of this: I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord.” (Psalm 27:13-14, NIV)

I had forgotten about that verse, but as I read it, I remembered that at the time I had posted it, I had been clinging to it like a lifeline.  I was dealing with the devastation of a broken engagement. The relationship was not healthy, but was also desperately important to me. It was the right decision to end it, but it was like a bomb had gone off in my life. I felt like I was missing limbs, but nobody could see it.

I remember feeling like I was standing on the edge of a cliff looking out over the rest of my life, and there was nothing left there, just a great, foggy nothingness. That’s where I was living when I found that verse, and it was like the one beam of light that gave me the shred of hope I needed to walk forward.

I was absolutely amazed as I read that verse and looked back on how God had had filled that great void. He had given me parents who welcomed me home for as long as I needed to heal. He had given me students to love and pour into who were a great joy and a reason to get up every morning. He had given me and my sister a wonderful year together in Scotland, full of adventure and dear friends and further healing and restoration in my heart.

Most of all I was awed to see how fully God had given back to me everything that had been taken away from me and destroyed.

While I was in Scotland, one of my friends was praying for me and had a vision. He saw statues made of sapphire that crumbled into a raging sea. After a time, the pieces all came back together and the former beauty was restored.

That friend’s name was Josiah, which means “the Lord heals,” and on July 30th, 2023, I married him. Both of our wedding rings have blue stones in them to remind us of what God has done in our lives.

As I read the verse from Psalm 27, lying there in that cabin, it was our first anniversary. Our wedding was at the camp where we stay every summer. I could walk out the front door of our cabin and watch the fireflies dancing over the field where we made our vows.

That night, as we were discussing going to the emergency room the next day, my mother-in-law said, “Let’s try another pregnancy test, just in case.” She drove me to Walmart and bought one for me, and when we got back to camp, we found out that I was pregnant after all. I got to tell my Josiah, in the exact spot he had kissed his bride, that we were going to have a baby! What an anniversary gift that was to us!

Surely I have seen the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.

That verse continued to ring in my heart over the next several months as we prepared  to welcome our son. We moved to an apartment in a safer neighborhood, we prepared his room. We picked out his name, Judah Ransom. Judah means “praise”—the only fitting response to a God who gave His life to ransom us, and gave us each other and a beautiful baby boy besides.

We kept his name a secret until he was born, and Josiah whispered it to him as we held him moments after his birth. It was about the last normal thing that happened that day. Before we could tell anyone else his name, I began to hemorrhage, and as our midwife worked to stop the bleeding, and I was on the brink of passing out, she kept saying, “Just keep talking to your baby.” I told him I loved him and said his name over and over again. It felt like if I passed out I would never wake up.

The paramedics arrived and Judah got passed off to Josiah as I was carried out of our apartment. In the ambulance, I was struggling a little to stay conscious. I didn’t have Judah to focus on and talk to, so I started to pray.

“Oh, Lord, thank you for my beautiful baby, but God, please don’t take me today. I don’t want to miss out on being his mom, and I don’t want to leave Josiah to do this alone. Please let me see them both again.”

Before I had even finished praying, the Lord brought that verse into my mind. “I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.” Peace completely filled my heart. I knew I was going to be okay, that I would get to see my guys again.

Even in the ambulance, our midwife fought hard to keep me alive. She estimated that I lost about two liters of blood. There were so many people that instantly went to work as we arrived at the hospital, and within minutes, I had stopped bleeding.

As the chaos died down and most of the doctors and nurses left the room, I looked toward the window, and sitting in a chair in front of it was Josiah with our tiny Judah in his arms. I hadn’t seen them come in, and was so surprised and relieved to see them again. I’ll never forget what a wonderful thing it was to see them there—it may be the most beautiful sight I have ever seen. They are the goodness of God to me, and I’m so grateful that I get to enjoy them here in the land of the living.

God’s goodness doesn’t mean everything is easy now and it doesn’t mean that tragedy won’t strike us. If I had never met Josiah, or we had never had Judah, or if I hadn’t survived that hemorrhage—God would still be good. But in this story that He is writing for us, this is the goodness that He has filled my life with. I’m not standing on a cliff looking out over nothing anymore. I’m standing in a lush, green valley, the promised land.  The fog has lifted, and I’m in a place full of His goodness.

It isn’t heaven, but it is a foretaste. God brought me out of the shadow of death into a good place. I know that when He does bring us home, nothing will compare to seeing the beauty of His face.

Whatever happens, I am still confident of this: I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.