Words of Faith: God Is With Us

God Is With Us
A Words of Faith story written by Cara Putman

"When you go through deep waters, I will be with you. When you go through rivers of difficulty, you will not drown. When you walk through the fire of oppression, you will not be burned up; the flames will not consume you."~Isaiah 43:2 (NLT) 

I want to walk through life without fear. To walk with the sure knowledge that God is with me. He. Is. With. Me.

Much of my life, I have known this to the core of who I am. In fact, this knowledge is foundational to who I am. If you read my novels, you will see that ultimately they come back to this point. That God is with us.

My characters learn that in some way.

I’ve had to learn that in some deep, real way. The way that strips the candy coating from my faith and digs deeply into the bedrock of my beliefs.

Eight years ago I had a miscarriage. Prior to that I would have said life had challenges, but it was nothing God and I couldn’t handle. Much of it was the kind of thing I could handle on my own. I’d thank God for His provision, I’d ask for His leading and His direction, but there had been very few times where I had been pushed so far beyond what I could endure that I didn’t know how to find myself. 

Here, let my words from 2010, a few months after my second miscarriage, illustrate how shattering these events were:

I’m on a quest to restore my heart.

The miscarriages have caused a piece of my heart to break. And while I want to grieve fully and completely—and some would tell you a tad too much—I don’t want to live with heartbreak.

I want to live where the sight of a pregnant woman doesn’t remind me that I’m not 7 1/2 months pregnant right now. Where the learning that another relative or friend is pregnant doesn’t pierce through my heart with another reminder that I have another little one waiting for me. That there isn’t the pain of separation. Of what ifs. Of what might have beens.

Each day I think I get a bit closer.

Then there’s an anniversary of a loss or a due date.

Or I simply go to Chick-Fil-A and see a pregnant woman or someone with an infant. And I smile as my eyes fill with tears. So if you see me like that, know I am fighting back even while my heart breaks again.

That’s where I lived. But I wrestled it to the ground with God. I had to know that when I was curled up in the closet with so much pain that I didn’t know what to do, that God was there. I had to believe that He would somehow use the pain for His good. He has.

If you’re in the midst of your own pain right now (so many of my friends and loved ones are walking such hard journeys right now), know that God is there. He never leaves. He never forsakes us. Jesus endured that, so we wouldn’t have to.

So if you can’t feel Him, look up. Look out. You will find Him. And He can put your broken heart back together again.

~*~

Author bio:

Cara C. Putman, the award-winning author of 20 books and three repackages with more books on the way, is madly racing toward deadline with her first legal romantic suspense for Harper Collins Christian Fiction. 

She graduated high school at 16, college at 20, and completed her law degree at 27. First for Women Magazine called Shadowed by Grace “captivating” and a "novel with the works." It received the Christian Retailing BEST Award for Historical Fiction and the HOLT Award of Distinction. 

Cara is active at her church and a lecturer on business and employment law and communications to graduate students at Purdue University’s Krannert School of Management. Putman received her JD from George Mason School of Law and her Master’s in Business Administration at Krannert. 

She serves on the executive board of American Christian Fiction Writers (ACFW), an organization she has served in various roles since 2007. Putman also practices law and is a second-generation homeschooling mom. She lives with her husband and four children in Indiana. 

~*~

Connect with Cara:

Website - www.caraputman.com
Facebook - www.facebook.com/caraputman
Twitter - www.twitter.com/cara_putman
Pinterest - www.pinterest.com/caraputman
Goodreads - www.goodreads.com/CaraPutman