Trusting God in Times of Uncertainty: 4 Strategies for Finding Peace

I don’t normally answer my cell phone while jogging through the woods with my best friend, but this time, I listened intently for the phone to ring. I’d received a worrying text from my husband earlier that morning concerning the health of his sister and her unborn child. 

As soon as he called, I snatched my phone from the pocket of my sweatpants and grilled him on the situation. Things were bad. His sister, who lived in Nigeria and was 24 weeks into a difficult pregnancy, was being flown to Atlanta immediately for an emergency Caesarean. The hospitals in her country did not have the resources to save such a premature infant. 

There are occasional moments in my life when I hear the Holy Spirit’s instructions with such clarity and insistence, they cannot be ignored. This was one of those times. He told me I needed to be at the airport when her flight landed in Atlanta. 

Though this seemed impossible—I live in Vancouver, Canada, homeschool four young children, and hadn’t been on a plane in almost a decade—I was able to obey this command with no small reliance on grace. 

When her plane landed in the US the next morning, I was waiting at the gate, and after a bumpy ambulance right to the hospital, we learned there was no need for the operation and she’d be able to continue her pregnancy under careful medical supervision. 

After several days recuperating in Atlanta, my sister-in-law and I returned home to Vancouver, with the well-being of her and her baby weighing heavily on me as her designated caretaker. She stayed in our home for a month until her mother and older son arrived to join her, then moved into a rental for the last two months of her pregnancy.

What followed was a season of prolonged stress unlike any I’ve experienced before. My husband, who suffers from a rare and painful neurological condition, had to leave the country for several weeks to seek reprieve from his own unbearable pain. 

My new nephew was born in February, several weeks ahead of schedule and weighing just four pounds. 

Then COVID hit. 

My husband was still out of the country and raced to catch a last-ditch flight back to Canada, followed by a 14-day quarantine. 

A week later, Nigeria shut its borders, even to its own citizens, and our family members were officially stranded in Vancouver. 

The four of them moved in with us and stayed nearly five months until they were finally able to return home. 

With 10 people living in our small house, stress was unbelievably high. My husband slept in the living room; I slept on the floor of my office; and somehow, though we were both working from home, we seemed to spend most of our time apart. It was a dark season. 

Early on, when the first cracks appeared in my world, I started having anxiety attacks. I knew I needed to stay strong and healthy for my children, so I reached out to a family friend and physician and poured my heart out to him. 

The coping strategies he recommended got me through those dark days, and continue to help me through the less tumultuous, yet still uncertain, times we face today. 

1. ACKNOWLEDGE YOUR CIRCUMSTANCES AND THEIR EFFECT ON YOU

In that first phone call, I babbled on to my friend for nearly an hour. When I’d recited my list of anxiety-inducing circumstances, I told him, “I don’t know why I’m so stressed and anxious right now. I feel like I should be able to handle this, but I just can’t.”

His reply brought me back down to earth. “Did you just hear the same story I did? Your husband’s in another country, you’re caring for all those kids yourself, and the world just shut down. I think there’d be something wrong with you if you weren’t having a hard time dealing with that.”

As women, we’re used to caring for everyone else, to being the warm, sturdy, comfortable place where our loved ones can come and pour out their own pain. We forget that we, too, have pain that needs to be recognized and healed. 

Realizing that the situation was bigger than me, that I was overwhelmed—and that that was okay—was the first step toward healing.