One Thing Remains
The month of March has taken on new significance for me this year.
On March 8, I will commemorate the one-year anniversary of a snowmobiling accident near Backus, Minnesota. When I regained consciousness, I found EMT personnel placing me on a backboard and loading me into a waiting ambulance.
I was admitted into a local hospital—the same hospital I was born in, ironically—where I was informed that I had sustained four rib fractures and a couple of lung punctures. This was not what I had planned for that day!
In northern climates like Minnesota’s, March is known for its erratic weather. (When I was in elementary school, I learned the March adage, “In like a lion, out like a lamb.”) We brace ourselves for the worst and hope for the best.
Yet even if you don’t experience March weather like this, I imagine you have had a similar experience with the unpredictable nature of life. From one day to the next, we can expect the unexpected.
How can we successfully navigate uncertain days? With the truth found in this song lyric: “Constant through the trial and the change, one thing remains . . . Your love never fails, it never gives up, it never runs out on me.”*
Only one thing is constant throughout change—our Savior’s love. One thing is constant in our failures and successes—God’s unchanging love.
Throughout this month—and for the rest of my life—I will celebrate God’s loving protection during that moment of impact in March 2019, His loving provision in the face of seemingly insurmountable circumstances, and His loving pursuit in my healing journey.
If you’re unfamiliar with this chapter of my story, let me share the briefest of summaries.
God’s loving protection is obvious. I survived the crash.
His loving provision was personal and unique. God lovingly provided capable help at the scene of the accident and a friend to help with logistics and moral support to my husband. The Lord provided me a travel companion, chosen months prior to our travels, who had medical expertise. If you didn’t know, I was on a plane to Germany about 36 hours after being released from the hospital.
Finally, God was relentless in His loving pursuit of my complete healing. Within less than 24 hours after I landed on German soil, a medical exam of my rib cage confirmed I no longer had rib fractures!
Even better, because of this accident, God lovingly—and relentlessly—offered a path to relational healing that has truly set me free. It will be my privilege to share this story more fully with you as God allows.
So, come what may this month—whether it be a violent, unsettling roar from the March lion or a gentle, restorative blessing from the March lamb—I am secure in the love of my heavenly Father, “who does not change like shifting shadows” (James 1:17b).
For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate me from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus my Lord (see Romans 8:38-39).
Constant through the trial and change, one thing remains: the love of God that is in Christ Jesus my Lord—praise be to God!
*“One Thing Remains,” by Jesus Culture
