Welcome to the Set Your Mind Above podcast, where everyday, ordinary events teach us extraordinary eternal truths! I am your host BJ Sipe, and I’m so glad you’ve tuned in today! I am excited share my life & my faith with you, and I sure hope you’ll do the same with me.
Today’s episode is one that will likely pull at your heart strings, and I’ll ask you to bear with me if I tear up here and there as I discuss it. But I hope more than anything that it will leave you encouraged, reminded about how much God cares for you. So, let’s jump right into it.
I was having a Bible study with a friend on our back porch when my wife Kylie took the kids to the park to go play along with our friends Kevin, Erica, & their son William. About 40 minutes had gone by when my phone rang, I looked down and saw the incoming call was my wife. She knew I was in the middle of a study, so I knew immediately that something was wrong because she was calling. As soon as I answered the phone, all I could hear was my son Dane crying in the background. “Dane was going down the slide and his leg got caught and went the wrong direction” my wife said through her own tears, “He won’t stop crying and he can’t put any weight on it. I’m taking him to urgent care to get x-rays, Kevin & Erica are going to bring Ava home.” I hung up the phone and ended the study I was in, apologizing for having to cut it short. As they left, I started packing things together that Kylie might need if we needed to go to the hospital. Sure enough, Kylie called me crying 30 minutes later, “I need you to get here as soon as you can. Dane broke & displaced his tibia. They are sending us to the UK Children’s Hospital.” I grabbed my bags and ran out the door, made arrangements for our Wednesday night classes to be covered, and Kevin dropped me off at the urgent care within 15 minutes. I walked in the room and saw my son for the first time since the accident, his poor leg and foot were swollen significantly. The urgent care gave us digital copies of the x-rays and sent us on our way to Lexington. After a long wait at the Pediatric emergency room we were finally given a room and were able to see a doctor. They wanted to x-ray his leg again to see if the damage to his leg had worsened, or if they were going to need to sedate him to set the bone correctly before casting it. This was the hard part. They came in with the x-ray machine and had to get more pictures from different angles of his broken leg. Well, Dane just turned 1 year old in March. He doesn’t just hold still, and he was scared & in pain. As they brought the machine over him, Kylie and I are having to hold him down as they are as gently as possible moving his leg and rotating it to get the right x-rays. The whole time, he is looking at us with tear filled eyes, crying “Mama, mama! Dada, dada!” We were crying too. Our sweet little boy couldn’t understand what was happening was necessary for him to get better. From his perspective, he was scared and in pain and we were just standing there doing nothing. Why wouldn’t we help him? Didn’t we care? Of course we do, but to him it sure didn’t feel like it. As soon as it was finished we scooped him up and held him, probably crying more than he had cried. It was just as hard for us to watch this happen as it was for him to go through it, but it was for his good. To the praise of God, his x-rays came back showing that his leg has set itself! No sedation was needed, so they casted it and sent us home. Our son is so brave – the only time he cried is when we had to hold him down and move his leg for the x-rays. We’re so thankful for the way it all turned out, because it could have been far worse. I want to thank everyone that knows us and was praying for him last night. We felt every single last one of your prayers.
I think there are times that we all have felt like my son did laying there on that table. We’re scared, in pain, confused, and left feeling abandoned by God. It’s the woman that has been praying for a child for years, watching everyone else have babies while she weeps alone at home every day. It’s the father that had to bury his child, trying to pick up the pieces of his broken heart for the years to come. It’s the husband that despite all his attempts to save his marriage and all the counseling comes home from work to divorce papers on the table. We’re left with the smallest and yet biggest question weighing over us…why? Why did this happen? And why didn’t God do anything? Doesn’t God care? How could he just sit there and watch me suffer if he really loved me? From our perspective, it might seem as though he does not. But if we could only see things through our Father’s eyes, perhaps we might see things differently. Let me be clear…sometimes we cannot know the answer as to why. I cannot pretend to always know or comprehend the will of God with such difficult things. But, despite the pain and suffering we go through, I believe we can learn to trust him.
The apostle Peter tells us, “Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you. Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world. And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you.” (1 Peter 5:6-10)
We live in a broken world. We are tempted. We are discouraged. We suffer. And yet what we cannot understand sometimes is that these things are necessary for us to grow. The testing of our faith produces endurance, steadfastness, and brings us to a place of maturity. While our experience is unique to ourselves, our experiences are not unique in the sense that everyone must go through suffering in this life. At some point, we all have been left standing with a broken heart, wondering if God cares. Let me reassure you that he does. Psalm 56:8 says that God keeps count of your sufferings and bottles up your tears. If we hold fast, and if we endure, he will restore us and bring us into our eternal home where there will never again be any tears, suffering, pain, or death. Until that day, he tells us to call out for him. While you’re in the midst of it, cast your cares upon him and cry out to him just as my son did for me. He’s listening, he’s right there with you, and he loves you more than you could ever know. God will bind up the broken hearted, and he will help to heal yours too. Let me end with the words of Paul the apostle, a man who suffered much in his life & in his ministry. He wrote in 2 Corinthians 4:17-18, “For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.”
Thank you so much for listening to today’s episode. Tune in, Tuesday-Friday’s, as a new podcast episode will be uploaded each day. Also, be sure to follow the Facebook page for the Set Your Mind Above podcast for future announcements and weekly video sessions that are uploaded on Saturdays. As you have the opportunity, share these thoughts with your friends and family, and share with me what important lessons you are learning from everyday, ordinary events. Until next time know that I love you, that God loves you, and may we all each and every day set our minds above.