When You Don’t Know the Ending Yet

Hi Friends,

I wasn’t planning to record a podcast with Finley this week.

Honestly, I wish there had been no reason to.

But over the last few days, so many of you have prayed for her, checked on her, sent messages, and asked what was happening that I thought the best person to tell you was Finley herself.

So we sat down and turned on the microphones.

If you have followed our family for any length of time, you know Finley’s eyes have been part of our story since she was born. She has now undergone 26 eye surgeries.

You would think after 26 surgeries you might somehow get used to hearing the words, “We need to operate.”

You don’t.

This time, we didn’t even have time to prepare.

What began with terrible pain and flashing lights in Finley’s vision became an appointment with her retina specialist Monday morning. Her retina appeared to be attached, but the doctor saw inflammation deep inside her eye and immediately sent us to her cornea specialist.

That’s when we learned there was an infection inside her eye.

We initially thought surgery might happen the next day. We had actually started driving home when Chris called and told us to turn around.

They wanted to operate immediately.

Within hours, Finley was back in an operating room while doctors injected powerful antibiotics directly into her eye and removed fluid to try to determine what was causing the infection.

As her mom, there are moments in this journey that I wish I could take from her.

The pain.

The fear.

The uncertainty.

Watching your child hurt and knowing there is absolutely nothing you can do to fix it is one of the hardest places to be as a parent.

But sitting across from Finley during this conversation, she said something I haven’t been able to stop thinking about.

“I’m the ink in the hands of the Author.”

She was talking about God.

She told me that she has reminded herself over these last few days that He is writing her story—and nothing she can do will change what He has already written for her.

I’m her mom, and somehow my 15-year-old daughter was reminding me what surrender looks like.

Not surrender because we know everything is going to turn out exactly the way we want.

We don’t.

Not surrender because she isn’t hurting.

She is.

And not the kind of faith that pretends we aren’t scared.

We are.

It is trusting God while we are still in the middle of the story.

Maybe that is the part I needed to hear this week.

We spend so much of our lives wanting to know how things end.

We want the diagnosis and the treatment plan.

We want the prayer and then the answer.

We want to know what God is doing before we are willing to trust Him with it.

But sometimes faith happens in the space between the prayer and the answer.

Right now, that is where we are.

We do not know exactly what happens next with Finley’s eye.

We are taking it appointment by appointment and day by day.

But even in the middle of all of this, Finley said something else that stopped me.

Right now, her vision is extremely limited, but she told me she is thankful she can still see light.

The sun.

Brightness.

Light.

Of all the things she could focus on losing, she was grateful for what remained.

There is a lesson in that for me.

Maybe for all of us.

We can be honest about what hurts and still recognize what is good.

We can desperately want our circumstances to change and still trust God while we wait.

We can not know the ending and still believe the Author does.

And we can remind each other that none of us has to walk through the hard parts alone.

Finley said she feels like she has an army around her because of the number of people praying for her.

She does.

And our family feels it too.

So this week, instead of my usual invitation to simply watch an episode, I have a different request.

Please keep praying for Finley.

Pray that the infection completely clears.

Pray that her eye is protected.

Pray for wisdom for every doctor making decisions about what comes next.

And please pray that her pain goes away.

We believe in the power of prayer. We have seen it too many times in our family not to.

We don't know the ending to this chapter yet.

But we know Who is holding the pen.

With love and so much gratitude,

Dallas