Through the Valley

Trusting God When You Can't See the Next Step

“You will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are steadfast, because they trust in You.” Isaiah 26:3

There are seasons in life when God allows you to walk through a valley you never saw coming — not to destroy you, but to reveal Himself in ways you could never experience on the mountaintop. For the last couple of months, Brian and I have been walking through one of those valleys behind closed doors, and we feel like it's finally time to share the whole story. Not because we want sympathy, and not because the story is finished, but because I believe God did something in this season that's too good to keep to ourselves.

When God Started Whispering

It began in early May, so quietly that neither of us thought much of it at first. Brian started having chest pressure and numbness in his left arm. The symptoms would come and go, and like a lot of people do, he brushed them off. He kept working. He kept serving. He kept leading Scouts, showing up at church, and living life exactly as he always had, because that's who Brian is. He doesn't stop for much, and he certainly wasn't going to stop for something that came and went in a matter of minutes.

For a couple of weeks, that's simply how things went. He'd mention it in passing, I'd ask if he was okay, and he'd shrug it off the way he shrugs off most things. But it kept happening, and something in me wouldn't let it go. I finally insisted he go to the emergency room, and looking back now, I think that insistence was the first whisper of God nudging me toward what was coming.

The ER doctor examined him, ran the standard tests, and told him he wasn't having a heart attack. "Yet."

That one word has echoed in my mind more times than I can count since then. Yet. Not "you're fine." Not "there's nothing to worry about." Yet. The doctor strongly recommended a stress test and an appointment with a cardiologist, and we left with that instruction tucked in the back of our minds, half-relieved and half-unsettled.

As it happened, we already had appointments scheduled with a vascular specialist around that same time, prompted by my mom's ruptured aorta back in February. That had been its own frightening season, and it had left both Brian and me wanting to be proactive about our own health. So we went in, had our arteries checked, and sat across from the doctor waiting for the results. He told us everything looked good, though there was one small area on Brian he wanted to keep an eye on and monitor each year. We walked out of that appointment relieved, half-convinced we were in the clear. I remember thinking, we dodged something. I had no idea how wrong that thought would turn out to be.

But God knew what we couldn't see.

Brian kept having chest pressure in the weeks that followed. We started grasping for other explanations, wondering if maybe it was something with his lungs instead. Anything but his heart, we hoped, because his heart had just been checked and cleared. Finally, on June 15th, Brian sat down with the cardiologist for the appointment the ER doctor had recommended weeks earlier.

The news was nothing we expected. Brian had a significant blockage in his left main coronary artery, the artery doctors often call the "widowmaker" because of how much of the heart it supplies and how catastrophic it can be when it fails. The cardiologist wanted to perform a heart catheterization to see exactly what was happening and, if possible, place a stent to restore blood flow. The procedure was scheduled for July 1st, and in the meantime, Brian was started on medication while we waited.

When Fear Knocked at Our Door

Waiting may be one of the hardest parts of faith. You know something is wrong, but you don't yet know how the story will end. Your mind wants to imagine every possibility while your heart tries to hold on to every promise God has ever made. I've walked with God long enough to know that waiting seasons are where He does some of His deepest work, but knowing that in your head and living it in your body are two very different things.

As July 1st got closer, I found myself wrestling with fear in a way I hadn't expected. Once the initial shock wore off and reality settled in, I had to admit it plainly, even to myself: I was afraid. I was afraid I might lose my husband. Afraid of what the doctors would find once they were actually inside his arteries. Afraid of what our future might look like on the other side of that hospital door, whatever that future turned out to be.

I've learned that fear rarely announces itself all at once. It creeps in through the ordinary moments. It showed up while I was making dinner and my mind wandered to worst-case scenarios. It showed up in the middle of the night when I'd wake and reach over just to make sure Brian was still breathing evenly beside me. It showed up every time I caught myself rehearsing what I would say to our kids if things went badly.

But fear doesn't get the final word. I serve Jehovah Rapha, the Lord who heals. I serve the Prince of Peace. And I knew, even in the fear, that we weren't walking into that hospital alone.

God had already assembled an army around us long before we ever set foot in that building. Family. Friends. Our church family. Prayer warriors from across the country, many of whom lifted us up before the Father without even knowing the full story, just knowing that Brian needed prayer. Some prayed in church sanctuaries. Some prayed at home, in prayer closets, or on the drive to work. Some woke in the middle of the night because God placed Brian on their hearts, and they simply obeyed the nudge without ever knowing why. Every single one of those prayers mattered, and I believe every one of them was heard.

The Waiting Room

The morning of July 1st, we walked into Kennestone Hospital together. What I expected to be a fairly routine procedure quickly turned into something much bigger than either of us anticipated.

Something remarkable happened that morning before we ever got to the hospital. The fear that had been pressing in on me for weeks was replaced by a peace I genuinely cannot explain. It wasn't because I suddenly knew everything would turn out fine. I didn't know that, and I want to be honest about that. It was because I knew the One who was already there ahead of us, already in that operating room before Brian ever was. I walked into that hospital with a strange, settled confidence that whatever happened that day, God had already gone before us and was not caught off guard by anything the doctors were about to find.

They took Brian back, and I settled into a chair in the waiting room to do the hardest job I had that day: wait. The procedure was supposed to last about ninety minutes. Instead, I sat watching the clock keep moving well past that mark, then past the next one, then the one after that.

Then I watched Brian's medical chart update online, one notification at a time. Additional procedures authorized. Blood transfusion consent. Emergency open-heart surgery consent. Each one landed like a small shock, words I never wanted to see appear on a screen while I sat with our son in a waiting room, unable to ask anyone what they meant in real time.

Sitting there felt like standing in the middle of a thunderstorm, trying to keep my feet planted while everything around me threatened to shake loose. And that's exactly where God met me. Not after the storm passed, but in the middle of it, while the wind was still blowing.

The enemy tried everything he could to pull my thoughts toward fear. What if something goes wrong? What if this is goodbye? What if I'm about to become a widow at my age? What if, what if, what if, on and on, each thought trying to pull me further from the peace I'd walked in with. But every fearful thought that rose up became another prayer instead of a spiral. I prayed. I worshiped quietly under my breath. I trusted, not because I knew the outcome, but because I know the One who holds it. At one point, sitting in that chair with my phone lighting up with updates I never wanted to read, I simply told God, "Lord, I trust You. Whatever road lies ahead, whatever shadows may come, I will keep following You. I refuse to let fear dictate my faith, because You have already gone before me."

I said that prayer more than once that morning. Some version of it, over and over, like a lifeline I kept pulling myself back to every time the fear tried to take hold again.

Peace That Doesn't Make Sense

Finally, nearly two hours after it began, a nurse stepped into the waiting room and asked me to come with her. For just a moment, my heart skipped, that fraction of a second where you brace yourself for anything. Then I looked down the hallway, and there was Brian. Awake. Looking right at me. The tears came instantly, the kind you can't hold back even if you wanted to.

The doctor explained that things had actually been worse than he anticipated going in. Brian's left main coronary artery was 85 percent blocked, right at the first major split into the left circumflex artery, and the left circumflex itself was 90 percent blocked at that same junction. This wasn't a single, isolated blockage sitting quietly off to the side. It was the very crossroads supplying blood to a significant portion of his heart, blocked from two directions at once.

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Then came another surprise, one that has stayed with me since. Based on everything they were seeing, the doctors believed Brian had likely been living with these blockages since around 2021-2022. Years, years of working, serving, scouting, laughing with our family, worshiping God and simply living an ordinary life, all while carrying a blockage doctors describe as catastrophic when it goes undetected. Every one of those ordinary days, we now know, was a gift we didn't recognize as a gift at the time. You cannot convince me that wasn't the hand of God protecting him every single day of those years.

The doctors were able to place two stents through his wrist, restoring blood flow without the need for open-heart surgery, which is what those alarming consent forms had prepared me for. Today, Brian is home. He's resting. He's healing. He's recovering, taking it slowly the way the doctors have told him to, easing back into his normal routine a little more each day. Every time I look over and see him sitting, or hear him laugh at something, or watch him move around the kitchen a little more like himself, I'm reminded all over again how close we came to a very different outcome. My heart stays overwhelmed with gratitude, because I know we are witnessing God's goodness firsthand, not in some abstract way, but in the very concrete fact that my husband is sitting three feet away from me as I write this.

Looking Back, I Can See His Hand

As I've had time to reflect on everything we've walked through, one verse keeps coming back to me: "You will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are steadfast, because they trust in You." Isaiah 26:3.

People often ask what faith looks like in a moment like this. Sometimes faith looks like believing for a miracle. Sometimes it looks like praying through tears. And sometimes faith looks like sitting in a hospital waiting room while your husband's medical chart updates with words you never wanted to read. Faith doesn't always remove the storm. Sometimes it simply anchors you so deeply that the storm cannot move you, and I think that's the version of faith God taught me this summer.

Looking back now, I realize the greatest miracle wasn't only what happened in that operating room on July 1st. The miracle was that God had been protecting Brian long before either of us ever knew there was a problem. Every breath he took over those years. Every heartbeat, quietly working around a blockage that could have stopped it at any moment. Every mile he drove. Every Scout meeting, every Sunday he served, every family dinner around our table. All of it was sustained by a grace we didn't even know we needed yet. I don't say that lightly. I've turned it over in my mind many times since June 15th, and I keep landing in the same place: that kind of protection over that many ordinary days is not luck. It's the hand of God.

What This Journey Taught Me

This entire journey has reminded me that faith isn't pretending everything will be okay. Faith is choosing to trust God when you have no idea what the next hour holds. The peace God gave me in that waiting room cannot be fully explained. It wasn't denial, and it wasn't wishful thinking. It was the kind of supernatural peace that only comes from the Holy Spirit, the peace that truly surpasses understanding. This could have ended so differently. But God had already gone before us, and I believe He goes before every single one of us into whatever room we're most afraid to walk into.

To every person who stood on the battlefield with us, to those who prayed in sanctuaries, prayer rooms, prayer closets, cars, and kitchens, to those who stood watch while we couldn't, thank you will never feel like enough. We are humbled beyond words that God placed each of you on our team for such a time as this. Your prayers carried us when the weight felt heavy. Your faith strengthened ours when the road felt uncertain. Your love reminded us we were never fighting alone. The battle was fierce, but the victory belongs to the Lord. He went before us, fought on our behalf, and gave us the outcome we're living in today through every single prayer that was lifted up on our behalf.

Above all, this story was never really about blocked arteries. It isn't about hospital rooms, and it isn't even about two stents. It's about a faithful God who never left our side, a God who still heals, who still gives peace that surpasses understanding, and who still goes before His children into the valley.

If you're walking through a valley of your own today, your own diagnosis, your own unanswered prayers, your own waiting room, let this be your reminder. God is already there. He isn't surprised by your circumstances. He isn't intimidated by your diagnosis. He isn't absent in your waiting, even when it feels like He is. Sometimes the greatest miracle isn't that God immediately removes the storm. Sometimes the miracle is discovering He has been carrying you all along, through every ordinary day you never thought to thank Him for.

Keep trusting. Keep praying. Keep walking. The Shepherd never abandons His sheep in the valley. Sometimes it's in the valley that we discover He was carrying us the entire time.

To God alone be the glory.