Pivot!

Have you ever felt like your life is a never-ending staircase of twists and turns, attempting to help Ross Geller carry his couch to the next floor?

Life is a fun ride, isn’t it?

Recently, after reviewing my trace mineral panel, my functional medicine doctor said, “You have been living in chronic stress for quite some time, haven’t you?” I chuckled and asked her which year she wanted.

Did she want the year our family had no other choice but to homeschool, and all that came with creating that decision in the first place—the thing I said I would never do? This was pre-2020, by the way, before the rest of the world had to do it.

Did she maybe want the year my arms and legs mysteriously stopped working all the time, often leaving me unable to write or type? Standing, walking, and driving were a guessing game, never knowing when something would just go numb.

It’s funny. I have been told that when we go to the doctor, they will always find something wrong. That wasn’t the case with this situation. It took a deeper panel to learn that a double whammy of Lyme disease and mold toxicity was shutting my body down all in the process of maxing deductibles and draining savings.

Enter the next pivot of that year—living in a camper for three months as my husband rebuilt half of the inside of our home after testing revealed a mycotoxin mold present in several rooms. What a sneaky little pest, hidden within our floors and walls.

Or maybe she wants the year that includes a phone call that still haunts me when I see our son’s number on the caller ID. The call that, when I answered, had him informing me he had been set on fire. The pain, the sight, the experience are etched in this momma’s brain. That same son, not long after, experienced an injury so rare that the surgery to repair it had only been performed five times in the world.

I could go on with the stressors of the past years and even the current one. However, let’s explore these mentioned pivotal moments.

For every life turn, there were blessings along the way.

I am so thankful to the Lord because He knows who and what we need in our life before we do. He already knows what tomorrow holds, and He will be there too.

He met me in our homeschool journey, sending fellow mommas walking the same path with their families and making the idea a lot less scary. Today, I am blessed with a community of families who choose this lifestyle, who can lean on each other, and I am so grateful.

He met me on the days when all I could do was sit or lie down because my body simply didn’t want to work that day. In the mandatory stillness that season of life brought, I smiled at the irony of the scripture, “Be still, and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10). I had a choice, and I embraced it. How often do we say we will make time and don’t? My excuses were slim for not spending more time with Him.

He met us when our home was literally contributing to paralyzing me, placing us at the right place at the right time and blessing us with the opportunity to borrow a camper for those three months while renovations took place.

And can we discuss that husband of mine for a moment? Witnessing our vows lived out loud—through sickness and in health—as he carried me when I couldn’t walk or stand, worked all day to provide, and then worked late into the night on our home. Being able to witness this firsthand brings those words spoken on our wedding day to life in a whole new way.

He met us in the literal fire with the right medical support team, along with the tools for proper nutritional support to help heal. Again, the next year, when faced with such a rare procedure, we were just three hours from a doctor who had performed one of those five surgeries in the world. The world is a big place, and we felt so blessed to have such access.

Let’s be honest. Not every moment that requires a pivot turns out with a happy ending. Sometimes they end up like Ross’s couch—stuck, trampled on, and broken beyond repair. If we rewatch that famous clip, there are other lessons we can find, though. We will all encounter people so focused on the fire alarms in their own lives that they may not even look up to recognize how they are impacting others. We also learned that we may be surprised by who chooses to show up in our corner when it really counts. Ross was expecting Joey and got Chandler instead. Oftentimes in our family’s personal pivots, our help came from the least expected places. Never underestimate the kindness of a stranger, and let’s not be so hung up on how we want our prayer answered that we miss who He chooses to answer it through.

In life, we will all have to PIVOT from time to time. But every pivot is an invitation—not just to adjust our direction, but to look for the unexpected blessings God sends along the way. The twists may surprise us, and the turns may bend us, but none of them catch Him off guard. When we keep our eyes open to how He chooses to work through our circumstance, we may find that even the hardest pivots can lead us somewhere beautiful.