He’s Not Done With Me Yet - Deborah Harper

It was September 7, 2024, and I was 73 years old. My birthday was in November. 

It’s a miracle I reached it. 

I’ve been a Christian for as long as I can remember. I’ve been a Christian novelist for more than twenty-five years with a total of eleven books published, and another in the pipeline. My understanding has always been that God’s gift to me was my ability to write, so I’ve written to His Glory for all of those years. Currently, I’m trying to launch a photography business on Printify (thanks to Kayla for giving me the information) and that will also be to His Glory.

Although I can point to those successes, for the past three or four years I’ve started to wonder if I’ve truly fulfilled God’s plan for my life. At 73 years old, I realized I didn’t have forty years to figure things out and get the ball rolling. It was during that time that I came face to face with my own mortality. 

I remember clearly being on my hands and knees in a tunnel made of chicken wire. The floor was carpeted and my elbows were hurting from being rubbed along the rough fibers as I tried to make progress. The room was dark. I tried multiple times at corners to grab onto taller objects outside of the tunnel to pull myself up. I couldn’t. Of course, they weren’t even there.

It was then, in the middle of the night, that our dog, whose kennel was upstairs in my daughter’s room, decided she had to go outside, a rare thing. Darice brought her down and after bringing her back in, heard me talking in my room. She realized I was hallucinating, an ambulance was called, and within a couple of hours, I was in emergency surgery.

While they prepped me, Darice asked a nurse if I would live. The nurse said she didn’t know. A UTI I had no idea I had was raging inside my body and created a nasty infection that developed into sepsis. The doctor estimated I would have lived five, maybe six hours had I not been discovered. Since that was a Saturday morning, Darice would likely have had to go into work until the clinic closed at noon and Molly would’ve slept in late. Nobody would have known I lay dying on my bedroom floor and I wouldn’t have been discovered until it was too late.

When I could think straight again, I realized what a miracle God had given me. Through a frightening wake-up call, I learned that God gives us life and He takes life. He was kind enough to remind me that He was giving me more time to enjoy the life I’m living here on Earth before I’m called home to eternity with Him. As a result, I’ve begun to delve into those things I always thought I would do “someday,” and someday has arrived. 

His loving, though horrifyingly stark miracle—using a dog who had to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night and a daughter who didn’t ignore me when she heard me talking in my bedroom—reminds me once again of His Grace and Love. I still don’t know if I’m fulfilling my assignment the way God wants me to and I might always have doubts. I’ll just keep trying.

And that’s what we all should do. Our Heavenly Father put us on this Earth, gave us life and gifts and opportunities to praise Him and bring others to His Kingdom. He knows our joys and our sorrows, our strengths and weaknesses, and most of all, our hearts. He knows about our doubts. If we ask Him, He will answer. I was so busy asking and just making noise, I missed His still, quiet Voice answering my fears. 

Just keep trying.

But after it was all behind me, after I realized what He had done for me, I realized one thing for certain.

He wasn’t through with me yet. I’m still in the game.

Our God is an awesome God!