E14 | When You Are Waiting for Results: What I Found in a Hospital Room During Holy Week

Have you ever been in a hard week and needed to know things were going to be okay?

This Holy Week, I found myself in a hospital waiting room. I had been avoiding going to the doctor for weeks because I was too busy, too scared of what sitting still might force me to face. 

Everything was going to be okay. Even if it was not, everything was going to be okay.

But the peace came before the results. And that is what this episode is about.

This Holy Week Selah is for the woman who is in a hard week right now. 

• Who is waiting for results she cannot control. 
• Who is being asked to trust God in a season that does not look the way she hoped.
•  Who needs to know that the One who rode into Jerusalem knowing what was coming is riding into her week with her, too.

In this episode, we talk about:

•  What Holy Week really means for the woman in the middle of a hard chapter

•  Why trusting God does not mean pretending the hard thing is not hard

•  What Holy Saturday is and why most of us are living in it right now

•  The peace that comes before the results

•  Why Sunday is coming even when Friday feels permanent

Transcript

Speaker 0:00

What if the most courageous thing you could do this week was ride toward the hard thing instead of away from it? Instead of away from it? Not because the hard thing is not hard, but because the one who is asking you to trust him in it already knows how the ends stay with me. I'm Tania Martinez and I'm the host of The Living Story Podcast, and I wanna welcome you. So we are in holy week, the week that begins with palm branches and hosannas And ends at an empty tomb the week that holds the betrayal and the garden and the cross and what theologians call Holy Saturday, the day of silence between the crucifixion and the resurrection. The day when the disciples did not know yet what Sunday would bring. The day of sitting with what looks like the worst possible ending before the reversal arrives That day of not right at the start of the week, Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey surrounded by people waving branches and shouting. He knew. He knew what the cross was going to cost. He knew the betrayal and the garden and the silence of the disciples. He knew that the same crowd shouting Hosanna would be shouting something very different by Friday, and he rode in anyway. Not because the week ahead was easy, not because he had figured out a way around the hard part, not because the circumstances had changed or the cost had gotten smaller. He wrote in anyway because he trusted what the father was doing, even in the chapter that looked from the outside, like it was all about to fall apart. I want you to hold that image as we go into this episode together because the woman I'm speaking to right now is also in the middle of a chapter that does not look the way she hoped. She's also being asked to trust the author of her story in a season that feels uncertain and tender and not yet resolved. You are not. Behind the palm branches watching from a distance. You are in the story and the one who wrote in knowing what was coming is the same one who sees you right now in the middle of your unfinished chapter. And I wanna ask you something. I want you to actually sit with it before you even answer. What is the hard thing you have been riding toward lately? Not the surface version, the real one. The conversation you keep putting off because you don't know how it's going to land. The decision you keep circling because you're afraid of what it's going to cost. The chapter you're in the middle of that looks. The chapter you are in the middle of that looks from the outside like it's going in all the wrong directions. The surrender that God keeps asking for, that you keep almost giving and then quietly taking back, and I've been guilty of that several times. Most of us are not avoiding hard things because we are weak. We are avoiding them because we are paying attention. We know what hard things cost. We remember what the last hard chapter asked of us and how long it took to find our footing again. And so we wait. We circle. We ask God to change the circumstance before we commit to trusting him in them, but here's what this week shows us. Jesus did not ask for a different week. He did not pray for the circumstances to change before he rode in. He rode in with full knowledge of what was waiting And the trust he had was not in the outcome looking the way he wanted from the outside. It was in the father knowing what was being accomplished in the chapter that looked like. Us. That is the kind of trust this week invites us into not blind trust, not the trust that pretends the hard thing is not hard. The trust that says, I know what is coming, and I believe the author knows what he's doing in this chapter, even when I cannot see it from here. Before I ask you to do something, I wanna tell you why I'm asking. After years of teaching and over 20 years of showing up in rooms full of people who needed a moment to stop before they can actually move forward, I've learned something that has been just as true in my own life as it's been in the classroom. The pause is not a weakness. The pause is how you locate yourself before you respond to something that matters. And in that pause and how many pauses I've needed, I have needed that pause more times than I can count On a Saturday morning last year, I stood at the edge of the ocean before my baptism. The relationship I had walked into that season was at its rockiest point. I didn't know what that week would hold, and I chose to say yes out loud to God. Anyway, that was my riding in the moment. Moving toward the yes, without knowing what was on the other side of it. And just recently I had another one. I had been carrying something physical for a little while, a pain that just wouldn't go away. And honestly, I wasn't addressing it because I was too busy. And if I'm honest, it was not just the busyness, it was going to the doctor meant I was forced to sit, forced to stop, forced to face whatever was actually going on, and I wasn't ready for it. But eventually I went and I went because I couldn't handle the pain anymore. And when I went to urgent care and the doctor looked at my scans, he said, we're gonna have to admit you to the hospital. We saw something and we need to check it further. And I felt the fear move through my entire body immediately. I didn't wanna face that thing. I was scared. I was scared, and I was not ready for what that sentence might mean. And then I sat there and reminded myself that no matter what it was, Jesus was there with me. He was there. So they admitted me to the hospital and the very next day they took me in for an MRI. And throughout this whole time. I wasn't allowed to drink water or eat. It had been a few days that I wasn't allowed to have anything in my system. So walking into the MRI, I wasn't even thinking about the hunger, what I was thinking about, what was going to be said at the end of that scan. So as they wheeled me in, they asked me, what kind of music do you wanna listen to? And I said, do you have any kind of music? They're like, sure, tell us. And I said, well, do you have worship? And the tech was like, sure, we'll put that on for you. And I asked for it, not because I felt full of faith in that moment. It's because I needed something to hold onto while I couldn't move. Because when you're in the MRI, when you're in that big machine, you can't move. you can't, you can't do anything. And it's confined. you have to hold your breath on command. The machine is loud and it's relentless, and you are completely still inside. But the worship music was playing as I laid there, and somewhere between the thumping of the machine and the instructions from the tech. I heard the other technician in the background singing softly. Holy is his name. And if you know the song, you know what the next line is? It says, holy is his name, Jesus. And something in me knew, something in me, knew that everything was gonna be okay, even if it was not. Everything was going to be okay, and I felt that deep down inside. and I was laid there and being scanned, figuring out how to process what I was going through, how I was gonna have the conversations with family if I needed to have those conversations. I just sat there and I let myself be held by that song. So then after that, after they took me out of that machine and they took me upstairs to the hospital room, I just laid there and I looked out the window and I saw the breeze blowing the palm trees. I. And just amazed at what God has created here and just so thankful. So thankful for everything that I had, even without knowing what the results were, because I knew that I had that. I have one thing and it's God. It's Jesus. So about two hours later, they come in with a tray of food. And I thought to myself, am I okay? Am I, is everything all right? And the doctor came in immediately after and said, we have good news. The scans are clear. And I want you to know that the day before there was something on the other scan, and today they came back clear, but I want you to hear me when I say that the peace that settled over me in that machine was not contingent on the results being good. That peace came before I knew. It came in the middle of not knowing. It was like that was my own holy Saturday, sitting with the hard thing before the outcome was revealed. and that is what the pause makes possible, not the absence of fear. The presence of God being in the middle of it with you. there was a word in scripture that I've come to love deeply, and it's sayah, and people say it differently. Some people say sah, some people say Sala. I like Sila. Appears throughout the Psalm 74 times. Every time it appears, it comes after something significant has been said, something worth sitting with before you continue. It is God's way of saying, stop here for a moment. Let this land. So I'm going to ask you to pick up whatever's nearby and write one word, the word that is sitting in your chest right now. Not a paragraph, not a journal entry, but just one word. And if you're driving or on a walk or, or just busy and you can't write right now, I want you to hold this word in your mind. Come back to it. Write it down when you can, because sometimes one word stays one word and that is enough. And sometimes one word cracks something open and becomes the thing you did not know you needed to say. So let it come. So Seila, write one word. What is a chapter you are being asked to trust God in right now? What is a chapter you are being asked to trust God in right now because what you are willing to name, you are one step closer to trusting God with. So going back to how Jesus took that ride into Jerusalem, I think it changes how we read everything that followed. The week that followed was the hardest week in human history. It was betrayal, arrest, trial, the cross grief, weeping, everything that looked like the worst possible ending to a story that had given so many people, so much hope. And then holy Saturday, that silence that tomb. That in between day when the disciples sat with what looked like a permanent ending and did not know yet that Sunday was coming, and then Sunday, the resurrection, none of what happened on Sunday was possible without what happened on Friday. The ending that changed everything required. the chapter that looked like the end of everything. and Jesus knew that when he rode in, he knew what Friday was going to cost. He knew what Holy Saturday would feel like, and he rode toward it anyway because he trusted what the father was building in the chapter that looked like loss. And I think about that when I have my own hard weeks. The chapters that look from the outside, like they're going in the wrong direction. The MRI machines, the hospital rooms, the Fridays of my own story where the ending I hoped for did not come the way that I expected. The author knows what he's doing in the hard week. the chapter that looks like loss is not the final word. Writing toward the hard thing with trust is not naive. It is the most courageous and the most faithful thing you can do you are not a spectator in this story. You're not watching Holy Week from a distance. Observing what it meant for someone else. Taking notes on what it might mean for your life someday when things are more settled. No, you are in it right now In your specific chapter with your specific hard thing and your specific surrender that God keeps returning to, and the one who rode in knowing what was coming, is present with you in this week, not watching from a distance, not waiting for you to figure it out. Present. In the uncertainty in the not yet in the chapter that does not look the way you hoped. He rode toward the hardest week in human history because he trusted the father and he is asking you to trust him in yours. Not because the hard thing is not hard because he already knows what Sunday looks like. So whatever hard thing you're riding toward right now, whatever chapter you are, in the middle of whatever surrender is sitting in your chest as you listen to this Sunday is coming, the author already knows how this chapter ends, and he is writing with you into the week ahead, whatever the week holds for you, whatever the scan says, whatever the conversation costs, whatever the surrender asks. because you are seen, you are loved, and your story is still being written in God's hands. Until next time, grace and peace.