No “Almost”: Peace When Life Hangs in the Balance
“Hello, Mrs. Wallace.” The doctor said, on speaker phone with Jim, “I think you should pull over.”
“Hon, they’re going to take me in Flight For Life.”
“You shouldn’t be alone. I’m on my way,” was the text from my nurse friend Gwen.
Gwen walked in and I used the term the doctor had used: “saddle pulmonary emboli.” Her eyes got wide. And I didn’t know it then, because I decided not to learn more.
But I looked later. If not treated promptly, cardiac arrest is common.
Did He Almost Die?
I think not.
Because Psalm 139:16.
"Your eyes saw my unformed substance;
in your book were written, every one of them,
the days that were formed for me,
when as yet there was none of them."
Every one of them.
Kept
My friend Steph asked for a one-line status summary before I left Jim at the hospital Thursday night.
I did her one better. I texted one word:
KEPT.
- As in Jude 1, “To those who are called, beloved in God the Father and kept for Jesus Christ.”
- And in Psalm 121:3, “He who keeps you will not slumber.”
- And Psalm 121:7, “The LORD will keep you from all evil; he will keep your life.”
- Then again in Isaiah 26:3, “You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you.”
A few loving hearts cried when I mentioned Flight For Life. I don’t fault them. Not for a second.
But I didn’t cry. And it is not because I am denial. It is because God keeps his promises.
“He will keep in perfect peace whose mind is steadfast, because he trust in him.”
Is There No Such Thing As Peace?
After Jim Eliot died, his bereaved young wife didn’t grieve the way Jim’s mother thought she ought. She suggested her daughter-in-law was in denial, to which Elisabeth answered:
“Is there no such thing as peace?”
Peace is the exact opposite of denial, I think. Denial is to declare a (true) thing to be untrue. Peace, Christian peace, is wholly in accord with reality. It is, after all, Holy Spirit fruit.
Yesterday, my love’s life flew by me. The chop-chop in the clouds overhead, I confirmed on my location app, was Jim’s ride to the hospital, moving at that second at 178 mph.
Peace, because Psalm 139:16.
And in your book were written, every one of them,
the days that were formed for me.
Peace does not stop imaginations. The scenes raced. Fatherless sons. Funeral songs. Financial papers. All the friends. So foreign this movie.
All that to say, I know my perfect peace was not dreamy denial.
“Your husband is in critical condition” the doctor had said. Flight For Life isn’t for fun. The 55-minute ambulance drive was too long.
Let me back up. I think you’re curious. I would be too.
God Orchestrates
“God spared me. I can see how he orchestrated things to spare me,” Jim reflected 24 hours after his helicopter ride. “It’s one thing to make it through and wonder how it happened. It’s another thing to see the threads.”
The pain started Wednesday on the way home from work. Home from work and straight into his blue, velour bathrobe and the couch. Then he rested his head in his hands after dinner and lingered alone.
Jim showered and dressed in the morning, before I was out of bed. It was game day, and on game days, he takes our son to school. But Gabe tied his shoes that morning, because he didn’t want to bend over. As he sat on the edge of the bed, we held hands and I prayed for health and the end of Psalm 90, the “satisfy us with your unfailing love” and “establish the work of our hands upon us” part.
Then came the golden chain, or a most delicate silken thread. What some call “the miracle part.”
Delicate Threads?
Because Jim dropped Gabe off first, he had an hour before his work day began. He considered getting breakfast, like he enjoys some game days, but called his office manager instead,
“I’m really not feeling that good.”
She didn’t balk, “You’re not going to work today.”
Because of that clear word, Jim decided he would go to the clinic just around the block.
And good thing he did. When I was three minutes away from my Thursday Bible study, Jim called to say they’d found more clots and were sending him to the hospital by ambulance.
Jim probably wouldn’t have gone to the clinic if he hadn’t taken Gabe to school because it was a game day and how that schedule was set last year and if his manager hadn’t been so direct about not coming to work, and then the clinic transferred to the hospital and the hospital called the helicopter.
And in your book were written, every one of them,
the days that were formed for me.
No doctor, ambulance driver, or helicopter pilot could add to, nor take away from, the days that our wise, loving God had already decreed.
That truth was the source of perfect peace.
When God says he “will keep in perfect peace whose mind is steadfast,” he means it. It’s not pie in the sky or weightless cliché. It is unshakable reality.
It’s the anchoring truth that lets me claim David’s words in Psalm 16:8,
"I have set the LORD always before me,
because he is at my right hand I will not be shaken."
I felt it when I heard the chopper pass, and again when 30 minutes later, in the car Jim called.
Not Denial
This time he was on the gurney being wheeled to the ER and “I love you” was exchanged at least five times between reminders of the location of important papers and passwords, and that a revocable trust was the way to go. At least five “I love you’s.”
But no denial.
And in your book were written, every one of them,
the days that were formed for me.
Siri and I texted prayer requests after during the second half of that 55 minute drive. Then after singing praise, I took a breath and gathered my bags and strode into the hospital in whose belly Jim was “being prepped.”
“The name of the Lord is a strong tower; the righteous run into it and are safe” (Proverbs 18:10), and “I have made the Sovereign Lord my refuge, that I may tell of all his works” (Psalm 73:28), and “He will keep in perfect peace… who trusts in him” (Isaiah 26:3) are not idle words. They are more sure than the ground beneath your feet. They are rock solid reality.
I know this because I know God and I trust God and he does not lie.
“God is not man, that he should lie,
or a son of man, that he should change his mind.
Has he said, and will he not do it?
Or has he spoken, and will he not fulfill it?”
(Numbers 23:19)
Every one of our days was written in his book. And God does not change his mind.
Perfect Peace
I am an N-of-1. What happened to me is a page in my story.
But I know I’m not alone. Because I’ve told this story a few times and when I get to the golden thread part some friends just nod. They know the perfect peace part.
But some frank friends have said, and I’m pretty sure most have thought, “He almost died.”
But I think not. Because Psalm 139:16.
And in your book were written, every one of them,
the days that were formed for me.
There’s no almost in God’s book. Nothing and no one can take a day off the span of your life that God already wrote in his book. Jim’s days, my days, and every one of your days are in God’s capable hands.
Our times are in his hands.
If you really believe this about your life and God it might make your scalp tingle or give you goosebumps. But it will give you such rock-bottom confidence that even when it feels like a preciousl life is hanging in the balance, dangling by a thin thread of coincidence, you will have peace.
There is such a thing as peace.
Jim got to take a Flight For Life yesterday. You might think he almost died.
But no. God already wrote Jim’s after the dash date, and it wasn’t February 12, 2026.
I write because I want you to know perfect peace.
The Lord watches over you. He keeps you. He cares for you. I want you to have the peace I had when the chopper flew by. I want you to feel like you are riding in the ark through the flood, like you are in the secure bubble of God’s love.
Because if you are in Christ, you absolutely are.
He will bring you safely into his kingdom, on the exact day he already wrote.
