How I’m Weathering the Storm of Seven Calamities in My Life
Just when I thought life couldn’t get any worse for me, bam!…I go and break my leg downhill skiing on January 26, 2023. Yup! I’ve been tracking the destruction in my world since covid entrapped me 15 months earlier, on Friday the 13th of August 2021, sending me to the hospital for four days with dangerously low blood oxygen saturation then subsequently stealing 80 percent of my hair. This tibial plateau fracture I sustained on the slopes two months ago totals seven physical, emotional, and mental crisis’ in less than two years. For someone who has enjoyed optimal health, physically, mentally, and emotionally most of her life, this season of suffering at age 58 has pushed me to my known limits as I process the punches that keep coming my way that I can’t seem to dodge.
First photo after my skiing accident with my ski buddy, Kasia Rezmer. I’m still in shock. Don’t let my smile fool you. I just learned I fractured bones in my leg after being taken down off the mountain by ski patrol and getting treated at the on-mountain urgent care.
Six days after the accident I had surgery to repair the tibial plateau fracture with a plate and five screws.
The things is, I know you’ve been suffering too. Each of us has been hit with calamity and crisis over the last three years in some way or another, ever since the world as we knew it fell apart. From deadly disease diagnosis’ to sudden deaths among family and friends; to the loss of jobs, marriages, and homes. Estrangement from family members. Chronic illnesses. The list goes on and on. To add insult to injury, our lives have been turned upside down with skyrocketing inflation where we can’t even afford a dozen eggs or the gas to drive to the market to get them. Political and social division is at an all-time high pitting neighbor against neighbor and teacher against parent. This social chaos is truly a first for many of us alive today.
I’m sure you have been wondering the same thing I have, “What’s going on here?” I go to my source for wisdom. I asked God why these detours in my life keep coming despite praying and doing His work in a myriad of ways. I’m reminded of what Jesus says in the Gospel of John chapter 16 verse 33 in the Bible, “In this world you will have tribulation, but take heart, I have overcome the world.” Other meanings for tribulation are distress, oppression, trouble, persecution, and affliction. Can you relate to any of these words? While Jesus tell us that he wins, that his love and affection for us wins over all else, trials of all kinds are guaranteed to be part of this life here on earth. Do a search in the Bible using the key words trials, tribulation, and suffering. There are a lot of verses where Jesus and his disciples prepares us for how life will be in this fallen world.
I’ve learned that eventually, if we are to grow and be prepared to do God’s work serving and loving others, tests will come. We’re told in James 1:2-4 to “Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.” I added italics for emphasis to point out that trials are tests. Tests of our faith. Question is: Who and what is your faith in as you go through these trials?
When lightning strikes in your life, to whom or to what do you turn for comfort and peace? (This untouched photo was taken on my front porch in Montana with an iPhone a few years back. Powerful, huh?)
Let’s backtrack a bit
I’ve struggled to get this installment of my “Everyday Miracles” column onto paper (or the screen to be more specific) for several months because the requirement for each story is that there must be a miracle or “aha” revelation I can sense or see through the experience I’m writing about. If there isn’t one, or I haven’t realized it yet, then I can’t share about it. I must be able to find God-infused wisdom to accurately complete a column I’ve entitled Everyday Miracles.
And as a former deadline-driven journalist, regular communication with my readers is important to me; not letting too much time lapse between columns that I’ve labeled “regular.” Of course, “regular” and “time” are subjective terms, but there’s a pacing inherent in maintaining momentum when writing a blog, or what I prefer to call a “column.” (I’ve always disliked the word blog, short for web log, a column published online. As an old school journalist, I prefer the word column reminiscent of when I used to pen an Editor’s Column for the bi-monthly motorcycle magazine I helmed.)
The last installment of my Everyday Miracles column went live on my website almost a year ago, May 1, 2022, (so much for trying to publish “regularly”) when I was finally able to convoke the courage to chronicle the carnage caused by covid. After 12 agonizing weeks of watching strands stray from my scalp followed by four months of processing the why and what of it all, my heart stood ready to piece together the emotions into a finely etched essay with the requisite everyday miracles to enlighten, edify, and encourage you, the reader. “Miracles from hair loss, you say?” Yes. If you seek the right source for truth and meaning long and hard enough, you will find the everyday miracle. Read that column here afterwards if you missed it. Now, 10 months after that, I’m able to make sense of what I’ve just walked through yet again. And I’m happy to report my hair is growing in fast thanks to the LifeWave stem cell patches I started using that you can read about here. No other product has produced these kind of results.
Here’s an update on my hair growth for those who are aware of my hair loss journey.
For more striking hair loss photos and to see the wigs I’m now wearing, go back and read my previous column after this.
Round 1 and beyond
Following that serious six-week bout with the bioweapon in August of 2021 and the ensuing loss of my long, luscious locks that left me with short, thin, scraggly cotton candy hair by mid-January 2022, I weathered a type of mental anguish that was completely foreign to my soul: an attack on my 15-year marriage. The phrase I used at the time was “I felt gutted.” All good and Godly things will be ambushed in one way or another from the prince of this world, the enemy of our souls, Satan. Jesus tells us in the Gospel of John verse 10:10, “The thief comes only to steal, and kill, and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.” So, if there is destruction, it’s Satan attacking.
And in my case, my beautiful “idyllic” marriage was being targeted for destruction. In fact, I am seeing all over that the foundation of our society, Christian husbands and wives, are in the crosshairs of Satan’s arrows like never before. Nearly every woman of God I know has or is experiencing some form of assault on her marriage, and if there are children involved, the fallout can have lifelong devastating consequences. While I knew I was far from alone in managing a marital mess, it didn’t make the challenges any less brutal.
Like a mighty hunter wrestles a crocodile, I tackled every evil spirit head on that tried to rise up in opposition to my marriage covenant praying that God would shed light on the darkness and breathe new life to the compromised parts. My worse days had me nose to the carpet groaning to my Savior, Jesus, for His strength to go another day. I pressed in to the promise that “His strength is made perfect in my weakness,” declared in 2 Corinthians 12:9.
After each weeping session with Jesus, my bathroom floor littered with crumpled snotty tissues, my nerves would calm allowing my heart to peek out from the momentary darkness to bask in some newfound spiritual nourishment dripped into my soul from above: revelation on how to tackle the day’s latest attack. This is how healing works. It’s not pretty sometimes. Puffy eyes. Exacerbating migraines. A body with no appetite. But with a listening ear to God’s Spirit, the Holy Spirit—sometimes straining to hear—I would receive strategy that literally changed me and my circumstances. That, along with some prayerful sisters in Christ, some of whom have slogged through this muddy road before, is what supported me through this most difficult period.
How I felt coming out of this latest calamity: exhausted and heavy laden from all the “mud.” (This is me a few years back after slogging through a muddy trail while backpacking in the Bob Marshall Wilderness in north central Montana.)
And the blows keep coming
I had never known emotional turmoil as in this season. Proverb 17:22 says, “A joyful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones.” I can see where the long-lasting effects of a crushed spirit void of spiritual nourishment can render one’s body sick and lifeless over time. It’s almost worse than physical affliction. And here I was in a minefield of both. The mental misery of my marital woes was magnified by an onslaught of new health challenges foreign to energetic, vibrant me. Turns out, these symptoms were signs of the covid spike protein lingering in my body. Migraines I’ve suffered on and off with for 14 years intensified in frequency, pain level, and duration because of the inflammation caused by covid still inside of me. Then came the debilitating fatigue, a common symptom of “long covid.” I never felt rested. I’d go to sleep exhausted. I’d wake up tired. I’d go for a short walk. I’d return tired. And it’s not the type of fatigue you bounce back from. It’s crippling can’t-catch-your-breath heart-racing exhaustion where you never get relief.
I’m a fighter through and through, born out of adversity from my childhood so victim is not a word I’ve ever used to define myself. But the flesh is weak, so in my lowest moments the comfort of self-pity looked attractive. Like a big gooey Cinnabon tantalizing the taste buds, the momentary satisfaction of labeling myself the victim tried to overtake my stout and noble warrior stance. I fought off the perniciously packed sorrowful emotion with my two-edged sword, daily reciting Jesus’ words to remind me of my victory over this temptation, sin, and death that He made possible through His atoning sacrifice on the cross. “I am more than a conqueror through Him who loved me,” I’d recite from Romans 8:37. “For whatever is born of God [me, Genevieve], overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world—my faith,” from 1 John 5:4 (my emphasis added).
Light and warmth always come after the frosty darkness if you pursue it. I love metaphors. (Photo taken in my front yard as the sun rises upon the cold of the night before.)
Seeing the light
You’ve probably heard it said that God never wastes a trial. That’s not a verse in the Bible, but certainly the concept is exemplified in scripture many times over. If you lean into Him during your hard times, He is faithful to deliver you. And during these most difficult and excruciating seasons, that’s exactly what I did. I didn’t have the energy to hike mountains and ride motorcycles like I normally do in the summer, so using what little zest I could muster each day, I stayed home opting to pull weeds from my yard while using my authority as a daughter of the King to bind up and pray away the weeds that took root in my life and marriage.
Weeds look suspiciously like the good grass above the soil. But pull them up and you’ll see a thick and domineering root whose sole purpose is to overtake the delicate roots of the good green grass or the good fruit in your life.
Aside from weed pulling, the rest of my waking hours most of last summer were spent on my laptop combing through the latest remedies for long covid offset by advice articles on saving Godly marriages. I was not going to be another marital statistic. Besides, I love this man.
Wait What! More blows?
My husband and I eventually crawled our way out of the muck after four hard-fought months on the battlefield (details to be shared at a later time), but just as we were feeling the warmth from the dawn of a new season in our union, the sun set on a very good friend last October, our next-door neighbor, who, at the age of 57, succumbed to an aggressive form of cancer. The loss of her bright and loving spirit darkened our newly lit hearts. Wait! What?! How could this be?
I was suspicious as several ladies in my vibrant healthy circle were experiencing new and weird anomalies in their bodies. Tumors out of nowhere. Cancers of all kinds with no history or reasoning as to why. And now, my never-sick-in-20-years-that-I’ve-known-her neighbor was dead. The common denominator with all my friends and others I was hearing about almost daily: the covid shot. I’m a stats girl. With more famous people suddenly dropping dead and professional athletes falling over on their playing fields—and pilots getting heart attacks at the controls (yikes!)—word was getting out that the jab was not what was promised. The numbers are just too hard to ignore.
Are you counting? My dear friend’s passing was number five. The sixth calamity to befall me, just when my husband and I were getting our footing back from her untimely death, was another bout with covid upon returning home from a family wedding in Florida last October. This time, armed with new information and a medicine cabinet full of health-saving remedies, like Ivermectin that was denied to me the first time, I fought this upper respiratory infection in 10 days instead of six weeks. Take that covid!
In October last year, I managed to pull myself together for a family wedding. When battling for your marriage, if both parties are willing, you must always move as a united front to battle the forces of darkness trying to break you apart.
But, yet again, my body was under attack with this latest infection. I decided to explore what Jesus says in the Bible about suffering. Romans 5:3 really encouraged me: “We rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit Who has been given to us.” And the Apostle Paul goes on again similarly in his second letter to the Corinthians chapter 12 verse 10, “So for the sake of Christ, I am well pleased and take pleasure in infirmities, insults, hardships, persecutions, perplexities, and distresses; for when I am weak then I am strong.”
Well that pretty much covers every situation for me at this point for me. Did you see those words: “take pleasure.” What? You mean, I can rejoice in all this anguish? I have a choice on how I posture my heart through all this destruction. Hmmm, I am sensing the revelation of an “everyday miracle” here. Are you?
Another verse, 1 Peter 4:12, really encourages me: “Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes up on you to test you as though something strange were happening to you.” There’s that test again through trials! Verse 13: “But rejoice insofar as you share Christ’s sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when His glory revealed.”
Here’s one more powerful truth that helped frame what I’ve been going through, and indeed will help you. First Peter 5:10, says, “And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you.” So, there is purpose in my pain, I was discovering. I don’t have to suffer alone or in vain. And neither to do you. Jesus is there with us every step of the way if we seek Him out and His treasures.
At this point, I must ask, do you know Jesus personally as your Savior? Do you recognize and desire to know His Father, the God who created the universe and every living thing? Seriously my dear friend. If you don’t, you’ll have no anchor or truth for the suffering that ails you right now.
May 2022, Memorial Day weekend: I did my first hike of the season here in the Bitterroot Valley in western Montana. Little did I know my body was still filled with fragments of the spike protein wreaking havoc on my system because after this weekend, I experienced debilitating fatigue landing me in bed for days. I experienced a condition similar to chronic fatigue syndrome never feeling rested and getting exhausted after even the slightest physical exertion. But the view at the top of the Blodgett Creek trail in Hamilton, Montana, was too fabulous not to share. God’s creation right here!
Jesus and his disciples talk a lot about suffering and the trials we can expect in this life on earth. I guess I was having a pretty good run for the first five decades of my life skating by trauma and tragedy-free, dare I say. (Real) life finally caught up with me. But here’s the miracle I discovered one day through all this suffering: God wants more for me, much more than just gliding along relying on my own wisdom and wit. And, my Friend, He wants so much more for you, too. The trials are meant to strengthen our faith, our faith in Him, the One who created the world and formed us in our mothers’ wombs. He wants us sold out for Him, no compromising. No “one foot in the world” and “one foot in His Kingdom.” No no!
Don’t you think it’s interesting that most people, regardless of their faith or belief system, when in crisis will cry out to God? We don’t cry out when life is going smoothly. We only really need Him and beg for prayers when the going gets tough. So, God uses those tough times to draw us to Him knowing the trial will produce fruit, the kind spoken about in Romans 5:3: endurance, character, and hope if we hang on to the end. So many people have no hope through their trials. They suffer needlessly and are destitute with no answers to why.
The everyday miracle today as I hop along on crutches for another two weeks before I can bear weight on my broken leg and begin building back my strength, is that I know God is doing a good work in me, refining my character by allowing me to go through the fire. I can choose to surrender to this process and be pruned by Him while searching for the gold, God’s wisdom, or I can complain and be negative grumbling through it all. Old Me before I knew Christ may have succumbed to the latter disposition. But new Me, the new Creation who lives for and in Christ, is learning to embrace this season of suffering knowing full well that God has great plans for me when I come out of the furnace on the other side. I know this deep within my soul. It’s what keeps me moving forward with hope and peace in my heart. And if I don’t get to enjoy the fruit of patience and endurance here on earth, God promises me there will be rewards in Heaven for my obedience and faithfulness to Him.
My last photo skiing on Jan. 26, 2023, with some wonderful ladies from Houston who were visiting my home mountain, Big Sky Resort in Montana. I’m second from right in maroon jacket. Sometimes I look back at this picture and think, “I should’ve gotten off the mountain right then,” but I quickly learned the woulda, coulda, shoulda’s get you nowhere and only feed unrest in your soul.
Two more weeks on crutches before I can start walking again and build up my strength. I’ll have been hobbling on them for a total of nine weeks. Talk about a journey of perseverance! Delicate snowflakes dance around me making me smile.
My dear Friend, I pray that you withstand whatever suffering you’re going through with steadfast endurance, and that you look to Jesus, the only One who can save you from yourself and the sin in which you find yourself. Jesus is the only way to true joy and freedom in your soul no matter the condition of your physical body or the unjust circumstances around you. I pray that you find rest for your soul in Him, and a supernatural calm in your mind and body as you weather the storm. If you want to chat, have questions, or need prayer, I’m available to communicate with you. Please reach out at gen@genevieveschmitt.com. And leave a comment below.
Resources to dive deeper:
These sermons and article helped me better understand what I was going through. I believe you’ll be encouraged and edified.
1. From the church I attend in Bozeman, Montana, a sermon called “Soul Shaping” by guest speaker Brian Van Eps discussing God’s pruning. Starts at 24:55. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRkRbEeO6ok&t=2s
2. Two sermons by Pastor Craig Groeschel from Oklahoma:
- “Why Did Got Let It Happen” https://youtu.be/N8nQYyLn6Nc
- “A Purpose in Your Pain” https://youtu.be/FPxNuKb-s8k
3. I just came across this article the day I published my column. It’s written by an expert in God’s Word detailing his season of affliction. I take it as confirmation from the Lord on how I framed my similar season. Lots of nuggets here: https://charismamag.com/spiritled-living/what-is-gods-purpose-in-allowing-affliction-and-infirmity/
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