And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. (NIV)

We know that in everything God works for good with those who love him, who are called according to his purpose. (RSV)

The past week or so is not what I lovingly look back on as a great week. It started on Friday (Jan 4), when I woke up and found that I had a bad case of laryngitis.. and I was supposed to preach at a monthly lady's group that night. I could not go to work, I felt awful and I could not talk. God told me to trust Him for my healing and not cancel speaking at the meeting. So I did not cancel it. My voice was so horse that day that if I spoke above a whisper it came out as a croak and was unintelligible. But about 2 or 3 PM suddenly my voice was normal and the tightness in my chest was gone. It was a "miracle" (albeit a small one). I went that night and preached on faith.. and it seemed like a good meeting where God showed up and met the ladies there. I came home pleased. I was well all weekend and full of faith in God's healing power.

Unfortunately, I woke up Monday morning with a bad chest cold.. one that had been going around work. It was different that Friday's symptoms, but I was still sick. In fact, I was too sick to go to work and my "faith" felt a bit deflated. I could not understand why God would allow me to become ill so shortly after having me stand on faith and miraculously healing me. The rest of the week, it was all I could do to go to work (hubby drove me to BART because I was too sick to drive myself) and then come home and go to bed. I tried to stand on faith on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday but I did not see any improvement. (Of course, I was beating myself up for not being able to successfully 'practice what I preached' that previous Friday.)

Thursday night was a low for me, I was too sick to get to sleep. So I started really pressing into the Lord and asking Him what was going on, why this was happening, etc. I asked God to show me any area in my life where I needed to repent. I asked if I was under enemy counter-attack in some sort of spiritual warfare, or what. I expected some sort of major divine revelation from the Lord. Instead God reminded me of a bottle of antibiotics that Ed and I had picked up on our last trip to Mexico. (Amoxicellin is an over the counter drug there.) I sensed He wanted me to take them.. so I counted out the same dosage my doctor had given me a year ago and put myself on antibiotics. They really made a difference and by Saturday morning I was feeling pretty good.

Sunday afternoon, Carol (the GodSpeak Bookkeeper) and I got together to go over the year end books. I stopped at a supermarket deli on the way to her house and picked up a turkey sandwich and a soda, because I had not eaten at all that day. After a couple of hours, I started to get a terrible headache and had to excuse myself from the meeting. Shortly after I got home, I got "violently sick" .. piercing headache, nausea, vomiting. I had a mild case of food poisoning from the deli sandwich. Please understand that a mild case of food poisoning does not feel "mild" -- it hurts so bad that you really want the Lord to come take you home and put you out of your misery. I was one very sick puppy that night.

I elected to stay home from work the next day because my body was still "recovering" from previous day's food poisoning. I tried my first "meal" .. a salad.. at 2 pm. As I bit into the lettuce, my gold crown fell off and the exposed tooth began to hurt noticeably.

I remember thinking to myself, this is not fair. Why is all this bad stuff happening to me. I would like to say that I was very spiritual and prayed and received a divine revelation at that point. But my thinking was totally on the natural. I had not been to the dentist in a few years and had no desire to go back to my previous dentist because I did not like his work. So I had to find a new dentist. I called a friend from church and asked her if she had a good dentist.. so she gave me his name and phone number. Then I called his office to see how soon they could take me, a new patient with an emergency. To my surprise, he took me that afternoon. So only two hours after my cap fell off, I was in the dentist's office. (See, God was really taking care of me, even thought it did not look like it from circumstances.)

If I had been at work, in San Francisco, I would have tried to find a dentist near work to help me. But since I was home "sick" from the food poisoning, I used my friend's dentist in Castro Valley. As it turned out, this fellow was an expert who used to teach at dental school and who handles the difficult TMJ problems. It turns out that the dentist I did not want to go back to had "adjusted" my bite, but he had actually messed it up. X-rays revealed this was causing a jaw problem and my x-ray showed my jaw socket and indicated that I was borderline TMJ.. and if I did not get the bite problem taken care of soon, I would end up with severe jaw pain and TMJ. (I had also found out that the antibiotics I was on from the "bad cold" helped the food poisoning be a bit less severe.)

The Lord had actually worked in all these circumstances for good. I am not saying it is good to have a cold, but that cold caused me to be on antibiotics that helped my body resist the food poisoning. I am not saying that it is good to get a mild case of food poisoning, but that kept me home "sick" instead of in San Francisco that Monday morning. I am not saying that it is good for a crown to fall off, but that got me to the right dentist to diagnose the TMJ shortly before it would become a major issue so I can get the treatment I need (bite adjustment) from someone very qualified to give it. See, God worked in all of those seemingly bad things to bring good to me... to get the bite problem cleared up before TMJ developed.

Now, you might think that I am "reading into things" to come up with that interpretation. I kinda wondered that myself, so I prayed about it this morning, asking God to please give me a confirmation on this Romans 8:28 thing. I got it this morning on my way to work.

I got to the BART station and just missed my train by a matter of seconds. The train door closed as I hit the platform. They announced the next San Francisco train was 8 minutes away. I felt a brief frustration because of the delay. A Richmond train came/went while I was waiting for the San Francisco train. Then I put on my head phones and started to worship, committing this commute to Him. The next train came and I got on it, getting the last seat on the train. A few minutes after we left the station, the train stopped and they announced a "delay" because the train in front of us was having a door problem." I assumed they meant the Richmond train that came just after I missed the San Francisco train. I almost got irritated at that... because it seemed that even in little things like a simple commute to work, everything was going wrong and there were all these delays. If I had just been seconds earlier and caught that earlier train, I thought I would have missed all the delays.

Then I remembered that I had committed this commute to God and that my intent was to worship on this commute. Then I thought, maybe God made the commute longer because He wants me to spend more time worshipping Him. So I choose to ignore the circumstances and put my focus on Him. I began to worship again. Then His presence surrounded me as I sat in my seat on the unmoving BART train.

After a few minutes, another announcement came over the BART speakers. It said that the train with the door problems had been taken out of service and the passengers from that train would be getting on this one as soon as we reached the station. At that point, God whispered in my ear, "Teresa, that is the train that you just missed. By making you miss that train, I gave you a seat on this one. If you had been on that other train, you would have had to disembark and then get on this one and there would not have been a seat for you."

I wondered if that was really God's voice or just my imagination running wild. After all, there had been a Richmond train between the San Francisco train I missed and this one. So when we got to the next station and all the people crowded onto this train, I asked one of them which train had broken down, was it the Richmond one? He said no, it was the San Francisco train. That confirmed it really was the train I had just missed. All those people stood in the aisles packed like sardines and they looked very uncomfortable. And I had a comfortable seat because God had worked good in "all things".. He knew the train I just missed was going to break down and He knew that there would be a seat for me on the next train if I waited for it at the station instead of getting on the one that would break down.

This morning's commute served as a confirmation to me that God does work in all things for good for those of us who love and serve Him. Things may look bad on first glance, but God puts His hand in it. He is able to cause good to come forth even when seemingly bad things happen to us. God really does know what He is doing and He really does take care of us.