He sustains me

So y’all, I listened to a podcast today that brought my circumstances to life. It’s a portion of the Bible that I feel like I skip so often because I’ve heard it so many times...but I’ve never heard this perspective....

She was talking about Hagar. She recounted the story in Genesis 16 when Hagar has fled, running away from her mistress Sarai that had stripped her of her dignity by forcing Abram on her to bear THEM a child. Once Hagar was pregnant, Sarai began to regret her decisions and mistreated Hagar. While Sarai had once been someone she felt like she could trust, she suddenly felt used and betrayed and decided to flee. While Hagar was in the desert, an angel of the Lord found her and instead of rushing in to fix her circumstances, He told her to go back and submit to Sarai. While that may seem cruel, especially in her time of hurt, anger, and confusion, we have to remember that God is good even when our circumstances aren’t. The goodness of God doesn’t dwell in the goodness of our circumstances but instead in the sureness of His promises. He left her with a promises of descendants “too many to count”. It was this promise that sustained her and she followed in obedience. But do you know what she said?

“You are the God who sees me,” for she said, “I have now seen the One who sees me.”

‭‭Genesis‬ ‭16:13‬ ‭

Y’all, she said “He sees me”. Can you even? Although the obedience didn’t seem logical in our sense of the word, or painless on this earth, He gave her promises to sustain her through the hard part of obedience. Because let’s face it, obedience isn’t always easy...and that’s where our current circumstances hit me in the face. 

When we found out I was pregnant we were faced with the option, quite honestly the suggestion, to terminate our pregnancy. That “option” would have allowed me to start chemo immediately, it would have slowed the massive amounts of hormones entering my body that could cause a reoccurring cancer, and also protect us from the potential of yet another devastating loss.  While for us, that wasn’t an “option”, it was still a moment of choosing to be obedient. While cancer isn’t easy by itself, pregnancy does add another layer of health risk....but God. I don’t say that to toot my own horn for being obedient, it’s far from that. You see, although obedience as a “big picture” wasn’t a hard decision for us, keeping Satan from playing with my mind is a daily battle. Although we chose to continue the pregnancy, there have been nights I’ve cried myself to sleep in serious doubt of my decision and potential risks. There have been nights I stare at Sadie and want to crumble thinking of the added exhaustion that pregnancy has layered on top of fighting cancer, and what that means for her. But it’s been in those moments that I have felt held. It’s in those moments He has seen me.

There has not been a single moment that He has not seen me and met my need. I mean going back as far as changing careers last fall, He has seen each need knowing this battle was ahead and He has met them. Just like Hagar, my situation is requiring some hard obedience, but y’all, He sees me. He sustains me. He is how I fight.