With God, You Got This!

I wish I were the mom who packs perfect school lunches everyday. I would box balanced, delicious food topped with a napkin. That paper napkin would be scrawled upon with words of wisdom. Every new school year I vow I will turn that dream into a reality.

On a recent manic morning, I folded a napkin atop a lunch as I prayed for our daughter.

Lunch time had become an ordeal this school year. Directly before her late lunch, this fifth-grader has recess. Recently diagnosed with Type I Diabetes, she often feels her blood sugar dropping. She often begins to feel lethargic and downright scared.

What if I drop too low?

What if I can’t go back to class because we can’t stabilize it?

What if I get another headache?

All questions we have worked through with practical plans and then a prayer.

Before diagnosis, she had learned Philippians 4:13.  “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” I encouraged her to personalize it, and without changing the meaning, phrase it in a way that spoke to her.

As I finished packing her lunch, I seized a Sharpie, scrawling on the white paper, “With God, You’ve Got This!”

I reflected on how much God had already proven He had her. He supplied her needs for supportive friends, understanding teachers, and a super-nice new bestie in her school nurse.  Things we had all discussed and thanked God for each night at bedtime. Her sweet voice maturely listing her blessings after we prayed for her prayer requests. Trying to end with her thoughts on the positives before she fell asleep, her blessing list warmed my heart as I tucked her in.

I would call the doctor each morning with her blood sugar levels throughout the past twenty-four hours, and she made tweaks to her dosages. As I dropped her at school each morning I prayed for her physical and her mental health. God loves her more than I, I reminded myself. He will take care of her. He will supply whatever she needs.

Over the weeks since diagnosis He has done just that.

And, with time, adjustments, and lots of prayer and positive thinking, she can now act like a regular ten-year-old girl again. She’s learned she doesn’t need to be afraid. She’s learned to listen to her body. And most of all, her trust in God has deepened: because, with God, she’s got this!