“For When I am Weak, Then I Am Strong” 2 Corinthians 12:9-11

One of life’s lessons that I’ve learned recently is to not look at all the negative things that have gone wrong in it but instead, look at the way those negative things have made your life better in a positive way.
I haven’t always thought this way. So don’t think I’m tooting my own horn saying it’s easy. It’s not easy and it’s taken time for me to find the good in things. Sure, there have been bad things in my life and during those times I don’t immediately think about how it’s going to shape me, but thinking back on my life, if it had went any differently I don’t think my relationship with God would be where it is today.
Rewind quite a few years to the years I remember in my childhood. I have always grown up in church. Since I was a baby, actually. I went to church every Sunday and Sunday school, VBS, did all the things you’re supposed to do, but it really was just a checklist. I didn’t have a relationship with God. It just was a thing I did, and a place I went to weekly, but I didn’t get anything out of it. Honestly, I don’t think my relationship with God really clicked until I met Dillan. In high school I never wanted to date to date, I wanted to date to marry, so I didn’t date many people. Actually, if you don’t count the two day relationships I had in elementary school, Dillan is the only real relationship I have ever had. I knew I wanted a Godly husband and I didn’t want to settle, so I never really felt the need to date anyone before him and when I first met him I knew I didn’t want to be another girlfriend of his. If we dated I wanted it to be the real deal, so I was actually pretty scared to date him. I was always worried it’d be one of those relationships in high school that lasted a few weeks, maybe a month or two tops, then it’d be over. I always had in my mind that maybe high school is too early to date him. Maybe I should just stay friends with him and if things work out I’ll date him when I’m going to college when life can feel more serious. Never did I think starting a relationship with him would last from tenth grade up until now. We dated 7 years to the day when we got married. If you had told me that would happen when I was fifteen I would’ve never believed it. I would’ve wanted that to happen, but I wouldn’t have ever really thought things would fall into place that way. Especially with him being my first real boyfriend and being so young. That’s when I knew God had something special planned for me. He allowed me to do the one thing I had wanted to do and that was to date to marry but not only that, date a Godly man that would one day become my husband.
My relationship with God grew more and more throughout mine and Dillan’s dating relationship because of Dillan being such a Godly man and he grew me closer to God and I wanted to know God more because of him.
Then, we got married and things were going good. I started to put God on the back burner. Almost as if I didn’t need Him anymore because I got what I wanted. I started to not read my Bible everyday and only read it when it was convenient for me. Basically saying, “Sorry God, not today, I’m busy with being a newly wed and don’t have any problems today to talk to you about”. It wasn’t long after we got married though that my mom was diagnosed the first time with breast cancer. Then I went running back to God. Reading my Bible everyday. Praying every chance I could get and trying to do everything right that I could, hoping He would listen and heal her.
We got pregnant with Hunter soon after we got married and my mom finished her treatments the day Hunter was born. She was for the most part better and started to get better from that point. As time went on, it all happened again. “Not today God, my moms healthy again and now I have a new baby and can’t find time to read my Bible right now. Maybe tomorrow, if I can find time between the feedings and nap times”. Those days as a mom of a baby who also had colic were long and hard though. For some reason it took months before I thought anything about praying to God to make my son stop crying all the time. Until one day I finally broke down and had enough and just needed something to change because I was going absolutely crazy. I talked to God about it all and felt so much better and a quick sense of relief. Things started getting better with the colic and he almost seemed happier instantly. But then because things were better I did it again. “Nope God, not today. We’re busy doing stuff and my sons better so I don’t need to talk to you today”.
This all went on non stop like a constant battle of when things are bad I need you but when things are fine I pushed God away. All the things that life threw at me I feel like was God trying to bring me back to Him. It worked too, because I did always come back to Him, but only for a short time and didn’t keep the close relationship as close when things were good again. When we got pregnant between Hunter and Maddie with our twins was probably the closest I’ve felt with God and, in hindsight, I needed that time with Him more than anything. When we knew we would be miscarrying them both, I had no other option but to pray. God didn’t answer my prayers and we did end up losing them both. He didn’t make things the way I asked for them to be in my prayers but things went the way He had planned. Was I extremely upset, obviously. But the wildest thing happened to me during this time. This is the first time I felt God really bring peace to my life. I wanted to bring those babies into the world more than anything, but I immediately knew it was not His plan. I knew He was doing it for my good and wouldn’t give me anything I couldn’t handle. The way I looked at it is maybe He knew I couldn’t handle two babies at one time, especially after already having a baby who had colic. Or maybe they had something wrong with them and if they were born I wouldn’t be able to handle them then or might lose them after they were born and that could’ve been even harder on me and He was trying to save me that pain. I knew God had big plans for me and those babies were apart of it in a way. I needed to lose them to find myself and my relationship with Him. That sounds terrible in a way, but it’s the truth. If we hadn’t lost them, I don’t know that I would’ve had a much more solid relationship with God if I was able to bring them into this world. That’s the first time I had felt Gods presence over me and His comfort when I needed it the most. That’s when it all started to sink in more and more. Reading the Bible really was just a check list before now, just because I thought if I read it all the time like I’m supposed to maybe God will answer my prayers when I need Him to. I was so wrong. The miscarriage of our twins changed me in so many ways looking back on it. When I read the Bible, I actually got a message from it. I thought about things more and didn’t just read it and not retain anything I had just read like I used to. I needed God more than ever during that season of life and leaned on Him more than I ever had. He built me up when I was at my lowest.
I think going through that loss actually prepared me for when my mom would get her diagnosis of the second round of cancer coming back that would be terminal. I had built my relationship with God up so much stronger than it had been before and doing so I came to Him for everything now and especially through my moms cancer journey. He gave me the peace I needed through our miscarriage and that peace carried me through knowing I’d be losing my mom also.
I think about life and how God has worked in it. I see how He’s used different situations to bring me closer to Him. I was reading an article somewhere about how someone wrote a letter about how the year had gone for them and it was just negative thing after negative thing. It was so depressing and someone rewrote it and turned every negative thing into a positive. It gave me this new outlook on how to look at the trials I’ve been dealt in my life.
It’s time to rewrite my life into a more positive story.
God made me a husband that I would one day meet when I was in high school who would soon become the dad to my children. My mom was later diagnosed with breast cancer and was able to grow her relationship with God through her journey that she may not have had the chance to grow closer to Him if she hadn’t went through it. We were blessed to celebrate the birth of our son in 2015. We grew closer to each other and grew closer to God when we later had a miscarriage of twins and realized God was using that situation to make us stronger for the future. We were blessed to celebrate another birth of our daughter in 2019. My Mom was later diagnosed for the second time with breast cancer that soon turned terminal and was able to bring more people to God through her last months of life that she had been prepared for because of the closeness she had already grew with God from her first cancer diagnosis. When we lost my mom, I was blessed to know she was no longer in pain and was rejoicing with Jesus. I had peace about the whole situation because of my relationship growing so much with God through our miscarriage and other trials that I went through in the past few years. He is using my trials now to help me write blogs that are helping other people renew their relationship with God and even bring some to Jesus who never knew Him.
See, your story doesn’t have to always be bad and changing the negative things to a positive can make a world of difference. It’s all about how you make it and seeing the good in life. Everything in my life has been apart of Gods master plan for me and seeing it unfold and realizing the way he’s done things is pretty amazing. Even when I thought I didn’t really need Him at times, He was always still there waiting for me to come back to Him.
I honestly haven’t known what to write about for a blog now that my moms gone because she was my main subject of inspiration. Lately though, I’ve been feeling like God has been wanting me to write again and I’ve had these things on my mind and wanted to get it all down to hopefully help others. I think that’s what He’s using me for with these blogs and I hope by doing so it’s helping at least one person and their relationship with Him.
I have prayed and prayed about what to talk about for weeks and I really feel like He is wanting me to tell people about my relationship with Him and how He hasn’t always been number one in my life and maybe that can be more relatable to other people who feel like they aren’t worthy of His love because they don’t read their Bible everyday. Or maybe you don’t pray like you should. Or you turn to the world first before coming to Him. I used to only come to Him when I needed something. Now after seeing the good He has done for me even through the toughest times in my life, I wish I had turned to Him first sooner. Through the good times when I just needed to be thankful and the bad times when I needed Him the most. It’s never too late to grow your relationship with God. As badly as I don’t like to be pushy or overstep and offend someone, the worst kind of fear I have isn’t of this world. It’s the thought of not seeing my friends and family in Heaven with me. Sometimes I just want to grab someone’s face and shake them and tell them to “WAKE UP”. Because we don’t know how long we have until Jesus’s return. Could be today, tomorrow, ten years from now. It’s time to always be ready and always have your heart right with Jesus. It’s never too late to come back to Him. It’s never too late to come to Him for the first time. All I know is Jesus is coming soon. Rev. 22:20 The time is now to change your life.

XOXO-Katelyn

Edited by: Morgan Marynissen