God is good.

So, I’m going to be honest-really vulnerable-with you.

I keep repeating the mantra “God is good. God is good to me. God is good at being God.” from Lysa TerKeurst, but I don’t know if deep down I truly believed them for a time.

I keep saying “this is the year of me”, but not doing anything to promote my healing.

I believed wholeheartedly that “God is good and He has a good plan” right after my accident, but the longer the journey has taken, the more I’ve found myself doubting that truth.

Life is hard.

It’s hard seeing friends do things that you used to be able to do. It’s hard. It’s hard wanting to do everything, but having to pace yourself. It’s especially hard looking forward to something but right before you leave, your brain is not having it. Life is simply hard.

Life is messy.

It’s messy when you make progress but not as much as you would like. It’s messy to want to socialize but your brain hates people.

When you’re in the valley, it’s easy to doubt the goodness of God, especially when you’re in the valley for longer than you thought you would be. This is what happened to me. I knew God was good and His plan for me was good, but recently I struggled to believe it in my soul. Life is harder than I thought. Recovery is a lot harder than I anticipated. On the 17th, it will be 15 months since my accident. I’ve come a long way, but I’m nowhere near where I desire to be. I got angry at God. I yelled at Him, wondering why he chose to save me, but not heal me completely? I shook my fists at Him, wondering why life was so hard now—why I’m 23 going on 93 (sometimes it feels that way). I feel like my youth has vanished.

The funny thing about God is that He wasn’t upset with me for being real with Him, but He didn’t let me stay there—in the pit. He put people in my life to encourage me to rise up out of the mud. It was my choice to listen to them. My mom confronted me about this fact. I was saying these things but she wasn’t seeing me do anything. I wasn’t doing therapy. I got back to driving, but that was about it. It was hard, but good having her say that to me. I didn’t really notice that I was even doing that, until she brought it to my attention. She challenged me, “Do you believe that God is good and that he has a good plan for you?” That rocked me. I thought about that and my gut response was “no”. I knew that it should be “yes”, but it was “no”. Over the next couple of weeks, God used songs and people to tell me “You are loved. You are loved more than you could ever know. I’ve got a good plan for your life. It’s hard right now, but good things are coming.”

So, I’m still struggling to figure out how to believe that when things don’t work out the way I want them to, but I believe it more than I did last month.

God is good.

God is good to me.

God is good at being God.

So, I’m choosing to believe that and fall in love with being alive.

“Because God’s writing your story and He never leaves you alone in your story, and His perfect love absorbs all your fear and His perfect grace carries all your burdens, and your story is a happily ever after because Christ bought your happily ever after so you always know how this story ends.”

Ann Voskamp