Divine Detour

Lori Ann Wood

Are you in the midst of a divine detour?

Maybe you’re just going along with life and unexpectedly, there’s a detour in your journey.

One that completely changes your life.

One that leads you to a But God moment where, after the initial shock, you realize that God is right there with you, taking your hand and walking with you step by step.

Lori Ann Wood is a heart failure survivor and award-winning essayist whose work has appeared on numerous websites, anthologies, and magazines.

In this episode Lori Ann Wood discusses her unexpected journey with heart disease and its impact on her faith.

Lori Ann shares how her lifelong Christian beliefs were challenged and deepened through her health crisis, leading her to write a book that resonates with others facing life's detours.

Her journey from teaching accounting to writing Christian nonfiction highlights a newfound urgency to use her time meaningfully. she hopes that her journey would enrich and enlighten those whose journeys have faced detours.

I was surrounded by it my entire life. And I married a man, Christian man. We raised our kids in the church.

And it just felt like a part of who I was and my story. And there was a part of me that's always felt like I had this sort of family heirloom that got handed down to me and what am I going to do with that?

And so that was part of the story as I went along. But, you know, I just, I've been a believer all my life, and it sort of took a turn in there when things happened a few years ago, but not in a way that was kind of an aha, I understand God, or I understand salvation, but more in a deepening of my faith situation.

You know, I felt like I had been given that heirloom faith, so precious and, and, and so almost fragile. But I wanted to protect it so that I could hand it down to my kids.

And I thought when I hit this bumpy road like so many of us hit in life, at some point I thought if I bring that family heirloom along on that bumpy ride, I might break it.

And then I can't hand it down to my kids. And so I had this point where I knew God and I trusted him, but I was a little bit afraid to really try out that faith and put it into practice when life was.

Just felt like it was going off the rails and I didn't know how that would. How that would end up.

We don't know all the things that we're protected from in that not knowing. We. One of the things that came up early with me was I just have this kind of peace in the middle of all the health issues that I was dealing with, this peace that came in that I'd heard about, but I didn't.

I had never really experienced it. And that was something that was such a blessing. My husband and I can both look back on that and say, wow. It might have looked like denial from the outside, but from the inside, we knew that this was that piece that we couldn't manufacture on our own.

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It started with the medical evaluation for a life insurance policy, actually, and I was trying to figure out if I could get preferred life insurance.

And they said, you're in great health, and you have less than 3% chance of ever developing heart disease in your lifetime.

And I wasn't very surprised about that because I've always been really healthy. I've always had low blood pressure and low cholesterol and all good numbers, and I thought I was eating right and all the things.

And then about three weeks after that evaluation, I just wasn't feeling well.

And I'd gone to convenient care a.

Couple of times that week, and they gave me an inhaler and an antibiotic, and I knew that wasn't it somehow.

And when I finally went to my PCP later that week, he listened to my heart with a stethoscope and said, if we're lucky, it's pneumonia.

And what he found instead with the chest X ray was an extremely enlarged heart, and I was admitted into cardiac ICU with my heart functioning at just 6%.

So that was something I never saw coming because we don't have. I don't have any family history, and I don't have any risk factors.

So that took some getting used to. The idea that that is part of my story.

But it was a temporary normal and they took my appendix out and I survived. But since then my heart function has decreased and I'm back around 20%.

But, you know, the more I learn about heart failure and what it is, it's really a chronic progressive disease. And so it. They don't really know what happened to my heart.

I don't have any genetic issues and I don't have any risk factors, but they suspect that maybe a virus attacked my heart at some point in my life.

From the book…

Nine months into this heart failure journey, I'm wondering when God is going to step in. I'm giving him all the glory for holding this thing together so far.

I know I should have never lived. This long in my condition. But now it seems like a logical next step with me on so many prayer lists to heal me and be done with it.

I've learned to rely on him, and now it's time to display his love and power.

But we're getting nowhere. No measurable improvement despite all the meds and all the interventions.

When I vowed to never need the internal defibrillator, I was sure I was just claiming an early victory for God. Now it's scheduled to happen. I don't get it.

Why not heal me, God? Why not demonstrate your majesty? Why not move while people are watching?

My healing after thousands of prayers and tons of faithful surrender, seems to make perfect sense.

I'm starting to feel duped or deserted, not sure which.

Both David, the man after God's own heart, and Jesus, the man who embodied God's own heart, were familiar with laments.

Each cried out to God when his. Belief didn't seem to match his experience.

Jesus pleaded for answers in Gethsemane with the impending crucifixion, and at Golgotha in the middle of it. I don't like where this journey with you is taking me, let this cup pass, he said in Matthew 26:39.

Why have you forsaken me? In Matthew 27:46, David, dismissed, hunted and rejected, penned nearly half the psalms. And one third of those are laments.

How long? Why? Where are you?

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Lamentations 3:25, 31-32

“For no one is abandoned by the Lord forever. Though he brings grief, he also shows compassion because of the greatness of his unfailing love.”

“The Lord is good to those who depend on him, to those who search for him.”

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When I saw these, it brought a smile to my face!

Spring is on its way!!

And Happy Valentines - a fun photo from my brother-in-law!