Learning to Trust God in the Midst of Darkness

By Barbara Rainey

At age 28 I experienced my first significant encounter with a side of God that was as unknown to me as the dark side of the moon. Up until that day my life had proceeded “normally” in the light … until one fateful June morning.

One bright summer morning in early June, enthusiasm for a new quest had me up early and the kids fed and settled with toys in the other room. I was pumped to begin my new workout routine to regain my pre-baby-number-two figure.

On the carpeted floor of our bedroom I began the first set of exercises when suddenly my heart began to race wildly. I tried to stand up but instantly knew that was not happening when I almost blacked out. Something was very wrong.

Somehow I managed to crawl to our bed and call Dennis from the other room, grateful he hadn’t yet left for work. Lying there I became more afraid with each minute as my body refused to calm from catastrophic overdrive. An unknown congenital heart defect was loudly declaring its presence: My heart was beating dangerously at over 300 beats a minute.

Thirty minutes later I was in an ambulance. Alone, surrounded by machines, a siren blaring outside. I was terrified. While the driver whizzed in and out of traffic, Dennis was frantically calling friends to keep our two kids, ages 2 ½ and 18 months. Then he called our parents and others to pray for God to have mercy. Finally, he left and drove to the hospital.

Denied access to intensive care, he sat in the waiting area with his fears. Alone in the ICU room I lay with my own; eyes wide, fixed on the ceiling, my world suddenly narrowed to the space between two white curtains outside of which lay a dark unknown. We both wondered if I would survive the day.

Eight hours later God touched my heart and returned it to a regular rhythm. A dear widow’s all-day prayers were answered. There was no other explanation.

Barbara will begin sharing a 5-part podcast series drawing from the book she is currently writing next week. Become a Friends & Family member to access all five!

I remember the immediate relief and gratitude, but after that moment I have no memory of anything—not seeing Dennis come back, not getting out of the hospital or seeing my two kids again. Only one memory remains: I was not me anymore.

Shaken to my core and on high alert with every heartbeat, my life became robotic, responsive only to duties. The sun no longer shone. I had lost my bearings under the shadow of a heavy dark cloud. All that I trusted was shattered by the aftershocks of this near-death experience, including my ability to trust God as I once did.

I spent the next three months in and out of cardiology offices, taking different medications then switching to other medications as they tried to figure out what in the world was wrong. My life revolved around doctor’s offices, living with side effects of dangerous drugs. And then in spite of birth control we found out I was pregnant with number three. A whole new set of fears for my unborn child took up residence alongside the fears that stalked my own life.

Finally, a name was given to my heart condition, Wolfe-Parkinson-White type 2, the worst of this usually mild condition. And it was incurable.

Niggling in the back of my mind constantly for the next nine months until our son was born healthy and normal and into the years beyond were questions like: Why did God allow this? What was He doing? What did He want me to learn? And why couldn’t I sense His nearness as I’d heard other people talk about in testimonies of the miraculous?

I was both young in age and young in faith and had not yet read the fine print in the Bible where Jesus said to His disciples, “In this world, you will have trouble [or tribulation or hardship]” (John 16:33).

I did not see God or sense His presence near me in that first year. In fact, if anything I felt terribly alone for a long time. I had lost my youthful optimism, my joie de vivre, my expectation of remaining healthy until I got old.

A favorite author on the subject of loss, Dr. Gerald Sittser, says, “Loss is universal, but it is also a solitary experience.” I felt very alone. My experience was uncommon; not a single friend or family member could relate. And because they didn’t know what to say most said nothing, which furthered my isolation.

My unspoken soul questions were these: Who am I now? Who is this God? What is He really like? These queries were unvoiced and unwritten and only synthesized this succinctly years later. In the confining capsule of this life-altering experience I was in survival mode.

Even my husband, who experienced his own crisis of faith as he sat in a waiting room alone, wondering if he was about to be a single father of two couldn’t really understand the nagging fear I lived with every day that at any moment my heart could start racing again. In hindsight I was suffering from PTS and probably other shock waves from that traumatic experience.

And yet, in my solitude, in the dark quiet awake moments in the middle of the night, I was doing business with God. Somehow I knew He was with me, though I had no sense or feeling of His presence.

Though I couldn’t have articulated it at the time I believe now that God, as He so often does, was working in the hidden places within me. He wasn’t absent even though it felt that way. He was testing the soil of my heart, readying it to plant and grow endurance, and other unseen virtues.

But mostly He was invisibly growing my faith as I invisibly and wordlessly surrendered to a God I did not understand but somehow trusted.

God was also waiting for me. He was watching to see how I’d respond. Would I continue to believe even without any answers? Would I continue to trust a God who just turned my world upside down?

Today I’m grateful for this difficult experience because I have seen God’s mysterious ways and though I don’t fully know all He planned and purposed, I do know I saw God as unpredictable, unconfined, working above and beyond what I could possibly understand.

Like Job I saw a side of God I didn’t know was there. And like the Pevensie children in C.S. Lewis’ Narnia books, I saw then and have seen many times since that Aslan is not safe, but he is good.

This is an early excerpt from a book I’ve been writing about disappointment with God. This topic has been a theme in my life, and I’m enjoying the opportunity to share what God has been teaching me. If these words encourage you, be sure to let me know!

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