Today while at work I started with two patients in rooms beside each other. The contrast was so amazing that I felt almost as if it was a gift from God Himself in lessons and encouragement.

In one room was a woman who was living with her boyfriend, currently unemployed, and in for a condition essentially caused by her years of smoking.  As I spoke with her, it was evident that she was in a bad place mentally and in her life.  Not suicidal, but constantly berated by her boyfriend and his mother. Everything she said about him felt so reminiscent of my first boyfriend- from how it felt like originally one had just stepped into a storybook romance to it falling apart with the facade fading away.  Painful moments of emotional abuse scattered throughout, and yet being so in love with the other person that one felt locked into the relationship. I still remember the night I was berated for almost 5 minutes straight on how stupid it was to even suggest the ring bearer be a ninja.  It wasn’t even a loving scold, it was an angry, yelling, tirade on how “stupid and retarded” of an idea it was. By the end I was sobbing, asking him if he could just not call my ideas stupid and instead he became angry that I was crying stating that I “must be on that time of [my] month.” This woman continues to endure living with a man who refuses to go outside to smoke because “it’s my house, you can’t tell me what to do.” She allows a man to yell at her for becoming sick and needing to go to the hospital- as if that is something one can control.  The more I talked to her, watching as she repeatedly broke down and cried when she talked about her home life, I felt God whisper to me that that could have been me. Maybe with the slight variant of being married, but that could have been me- miserable beyond words, an broken shell of the woman I once was. I thank and praise God for His mercies and rescuing me from myself when it came to my first boyfriend.

In the very next room was my other patient who we had to tell potentially had a mass in her belly. As I started talking with her, she began to cry and I ended up talking to her about God. Come to find out she knew Him and it was SO encouraging and amazing to speak with her. I was able to encourage her to read Battlefield of the Mind by Joyce Meyers and I could feel that she was drawing strength just by being encouraged to put it all in God’s hands. In the end when she left, I could feel that she was resolved to leave it in His hands. She knew that part of her game plan was to have a support system that would pray with her. She was ready to face come what may with God at her side.

What a contrast! What a stark contrast from the “might have been” in one room to the other who was putting her trust in God.  May I be the one who chooses God. May I be the one who chooses His ways.  May I be the one in the second room when the time is down.

Jesus, 

When we have two rooms in our lives, which will we choose? Will we choose sin, and find ourselves a shadow of who we should be? Or will we choose God and shine brighter than the day? Lord, may I choose You always. 

Rebekah M.