We needed to redo our will but had different ideas about how to do it. After talking a few times and getting nowhere, I wanted to wait until we could meet with our attorney. My reason being that in front of a neutral 3rd party, we’d be on our best behavior, since up ’til now, we hadn’t been.

Here’s a relevant detail: my husband is an estate planner. It’s what he’s done successfully for more than 40 years. He didn’t need to learn more about it from an attorney to know what the best choices were or how to implement them.

And here’s another relevant detail: I knew nothing about estate planning. And while you’d think I’d be all ears, I wasn’t. Call it my idiosyncratic self, call it ignorance, call it sin, but what my husband kept saying about it left me feeling hurt and unheard. 

I was immovable about having a 3rd party, but as an estate planner, he wanted to move ahead. So he met with the attorney alone to get the details of his will hammered out.

Wait…his will?

When I got a whiff of those two words, I was undone. “I thought it was OUR will,” I pouted, feeling not only left out, but cut-the-heck-out.

I was watering the white coneflowers I planted last month as he tried to explain. “Stop,” I said, barely croaking it out, “can I just come to the next appointment with your attorney to go over things?”

“Sure,” he said, and just that minute, a call came in from the attorney’s assistant–talk about perfect timing–and an appointment was made for two days hence.

I spent the rest of the afternoon wallowing in my emotional wasteland as I transplanted lenten rose, spread pine straw, and watered the hydrangeas still producing October blooms. I get a lot of yard work done when I’m wrecked in my desert.

I wanted to believe the best about what was happening, but I feared the worst thing I could imagine, which was that I was about to be divorced and have nothing to my name, since all our assets were even now getting locked up in an irrevocable trust I didn’t trust.

Let’s skip over why I could conceive of such a thing from my husband of 46 years and focus instead on why I thought God would hang me out to dry like this after 68 years of living. 

Hadn’t God always provided for me? Hadn’t he promised he’d never stop watching over me, taking care of me, being God for me? Hadn’t he said he’d make all the wrong things right and defend the cause of the underdog? Arf.

Yes, he had, but I didn’t believe him, and my feeling undone was proof of it.

I spent the next two days trying to trust both of them, because I had no other choice. Between a rock (thinking God would fail me) and a hard place (thinking my husband would fail me), I finally chose to let it all go and jumped into the Everlasting Arms that God said would hold me. 

I must’ve rested there all of 15 minutes, tops, before I found myself in the attorney’s office with my husband. Rick explained the work he’d already done for hubby, involving his retirement account. He explained the work he still had to do for both of us, involving joint assets. And he explained the work he’d like to do for me, involving what my parents left.

It was a wonderful plan–even I could see that. And there was nothing irrevocable about it: I could amend it as needed. Not only was I not cut out, I wasn’t left out, either. In fact, if he went first, I’d get everything.

Who wouldn’t agree to that?

God kept his promises. His help was on the way, even before my first doubt. But I needed to go through this little trial of who-did-I-trust, because I needed to learn what’s true about us—God is faithful, even when I am not, 2 Ti 2:13.

“God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble.”
‭‭Ps‬ ‭46‬:‭1‬ ‭NIV. ‬‬

“Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside your Father’s care,” Mt 10:29 NIV.