Trusting God In The Most Significant Trauma Of My Life

There is something wrong with me.

These words echoed through my mind on a car ride to Napa where I attempted to talk with my sister on the phone. Listening out of my left ear instead of my right ear, I struggled to hear her. My husband was driving the car and told me he could hear my sister, so why couldn’t I?

Maybe I am losing my hearing in my left ear.

I didn’t want to believe this thought, so I kept putting it off until, one day, I was convinced it was not a temporary issue.

Upon return from our trip, I visited my doctor, who referred me to an audiologist. Due to a canceled appointment, I could see him the same afternoon. The standard hearing tests were run to see if there was a problem with my hearing. The results were as I suspected, but the audiologist would not get me a hearing aid.

He wanted me to find out why I was losing my hearing.

A week later, I found out the heartbreaking news: I had a tumor in my brain.

This vestibular schwannoma was slow-growing, non-cancerous and needed to be removed. Located on the nerve of my inner ear, the ringing in my ear and loss of hearing started to make sense.

Under normal circumstances, I would start worrying. But for the first time, God gave me the strength to face every step of this journey.

I learned I could trust Him this time, not second-guess Him. I didn’t need to worry about the results of my surgery. God was in complete control, as usual. For once, I was not shaken!

God had not left me during my diagnosis and surgery. He was right beside me.

God was also with me as I recovered, and when I went on to have a second surgery eight months later. This outpatient surgery was to attach a cochlear implant under my skin. Weeks later, I was fitted with a sound processor attached to my skull by a magnet to the implant’s metal. The sound processor carried what I should have heard on my left to my right side, where I could hear.

It did not give me normal hearing, but it did help in making me feel like I could hear.

Thankfully, the surgery got as much of the tumor as they could, but because it was slowly growing, I needed to have MRIs regularly to make sure it was not coming back. In the years since my surgery, my tumor has NOT grown significantly. Recently, I had my hearing evaluated to ensure that my right ear was still hearing normally. I am grateful it is.

Through it all, God gave me the strength to trust Him entirely in the most significant trauma of my life.

He did not let me down. God had everything under control. I had no reason to be shaken. Praying you can trust God in your most significant trauma too.

Kimberly De Jong’s faith journey has been shaped by her parents, who raised her in the church, with a faith she remains steadfast to today. She enjoys quilting, reading, and visiting with her six grandchildren, when not writing. She and her husband of forty-eight years, Phil, reside in Central California. Trusting God Through Life’s Transitions is Kimberly’s first devotional book.