Not Again

This time last year, I got what I called the Stye of the Century. It was so large it was an automatic and inescapable topic of conversation. It was so large I had a nurse friend tell me that she’d never seen its like. It was so large it left a slight scar. It was so large that astronauts could see it from outer space and thought there was a new volcano forming on the earth’s crust.

That last one may have been an exaggeration.

Regardless, the point is that the Stye of the Century believed strongly in “go big or go home” and had no intention of going home any time soon, instead, lingering on my face for half of the month of March and making my life miserable for that entire space of time.

You might imagine my trepidation when, on the very anniversary of the Stye’s initial eruption, there appeared beside my other eye, Stye 2.0. I couldn’t help but think, here we go again, before bracing for the worst.

Most of us don’t just face the dread of “not again” over silly things like styes.

When I got pregnant after my miscarriage, I was terrified, just waiting for history to repeat itself. I didn’t want to tell anyone about the pregnancy because I was so sure something would go wrong. It didn’t matter that, logically, I’d had three incredibly healthy pregnancies before the miscarriage. No, all I could remember was the trauma of finding out at thirteen weeks pregnant—after we had already told the kids, after we’d already gotten through the first trimester—that there was nothing growing in the amniotic sac. I remembered fielding well-meaning questions about my pregnant belly for the following three weeks while I waited for my body to miscarry. It was heart-breaking.

It is hard for us as humans, when we have gone through something difficult, to not imagine that the same terror will descend on us again. We are braced for impact.

Every time there is a blip in my emotional health, the temptation surfaces to wonder if this time it’s going to take me back into a deep depression. Every time, I worry: what if this is the time I don’t come out on the other side? Every time, in the back of my head, is the thought: how much longer can I keep fighting this?

You have your own struggle. It might not be your mental health or a miscarriage (or a stupid stye). Maybe it’s something else. What if this is the time your spouse can’t forgive you? (What if this is the time you can’t forgive your spouse?) What if you can’t find another job? What if this is the time you say or do something irredeemable? What if this natural disaster is the one you can’t come back from? What if this hospital stay doesn’t end in healing?

May I tell you something? This year’s stye was gone in two days. It was nothing. It was not worth worrying about. My post-miscarriage baby is five year’s old now with a dimple in one cheek and enough sass to keep all of us on our toes. And yes, there may come a day when my depression gets the best of me, but it hasn’t happened yet.

There are no guarantees. We know that. But there is also past experience which tells us that we got through it once, which means there is a good possibility we will be able to get through it again.

And there is hope. There is hope that this time will be different.

This time the darkness will not be so heavy. This time the baby will grow. This time the weight will not cripple us. This time there will be help.

Hard times may come again but they will not necessarily be the same hard times. There may be victory again or there may be defeat, but the defeat may not be as insurmountable as we imagine it to be. The grief might not be the end of the story. The brokenness may yet have a purpose we can’t yet see.

And I take it back: there is one guarantee. There is the guarantee that what we go through, from the small struggles to the large, we do not go through alone.

When we look at our circumstances and cry out, “Oh, please, Lord, not again!”, He answers: yes, I will be with you again. Until the very end of the age.

Walking the pain with us. Sitting with us in the struggle. Carrying the weight on His shoulders just as He carried the cross for us all those years ago.

Yes, again. And again. And again.

In our “Not again”, He steps in. Again.

There are no guarantees we won’t face suffering and hardship and struggles, but there is hope.

And there is Jesus—walking with us through the pain until our “not agains” reach their end in “Amen."