In case you didn’t know, I am 33 weeks pregnant. As it gets closer, the more anxious I get. I have never really considered myself an anxious person, but as soon as I found out I was pregnant, I started worrying about every possible bad thing that could happen to me or my baby. It doesn’t help that when you’re pregnant, everyone feels like that means they should tell you their pregnancy horror stories. So literally every horror story I hear about labor or delivery, I convince myself that is going to happen to me. Every article I read, I am convinced I have that illness. Every pain I feel, I think I’m going into preterm labor.

My family and friends try to help. They tell me these bad things aren’t going to happen to me. They tell me that I have to stop worrying because stress can harm the baby (which just makes me worry MORE because I can’t stop). They tell me that I am going to be fine because God is in control.

I know God is in control. But I still worry, because I know that just because God is control, that doesn’t mean nothing bad will happen to you. There are plenty of Christians who trust God to heal them or to make everything better, but really bad things still happen to them. BUT GOD IS STILL IN CONTROL. I think in today’s social media driven world, we really talk a lot about God blessing us when things are great. We got a job promotion; God is good! We got a new house; God is good! We had a healthy baby; God is good! But people rarely say I lost my job; God is good! We are losing our house; God is good! Our baby was stillborn; God is good! But the fact remains that God is good all the time. We may only feel like God is in control when things are going good for us, and we wonder why God is abandoning us in our times of hardship—but Jesus never promised us an easy life full of pain on this earth. Our hope is in an eternity with him.

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding.” Proverbs 3:5

This is one of the most memorized and talked about Bible verses. But it wasn’t until recently that I feel like I truly understood it’s meaning for the first time. As a Christian, we are trusting in God’s plan no matter what. We are saying to God that we trust him, even when He chooses to let the bad happen to us, because we trust in His plan more than our own. Our human minds can’t understand God’s plan. We are never going to like bad things happening to us, but trusting in God means that even through the bad, we still know that God is in control and God is good.

I don’t know what is going to happen in this pregnancy. I may have a healthy next 7 weeks, and birth a perfectly healthy baby, or I may not. But either way, I am choosing to trust that God is in control, and He is good, no matter what happens.