seven days of thanksgiving. day 4. our God of the bathroom floor.

Always be joyful. Never stop praying. Be thankful in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you who belong to Christ Jesus. – 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 (NLT)

Today was my first follow up visit from my foot surgery – and the appointment went well overall. My foot is healing slowly – as expected with my health issues – but the site is clear and all seems stable. Another week of treatment, IV antibiotics (I have several more weeks of those), and rest was ordered and then we will evaluate it and decide what to do with sutures next week.

Still, this has been the strangest of my – unfortunately – many foot infections and surgeries.

The sepsis came on so suddenly, with symptoms I’ve never had before, and it was severe. Since then, because it came with a CRPS flare in my left foot as well, I am so grateful for its healing (of course) but it has been much more painful than some of my surgeries that were less successful for want of a better word.

Also, before my appointment today, I received my weekly lab results – I have to be closely monitored with the antibiotics – and my inflammation markers are still just ridiculous. This isn’t surprising with the infection, surgery, and CRPS flare – but it does explain why I haven’t “bounced back” as quickly as my impatient self would like in terms of the fatigue and exhaustion.

All that to say, I am so grateful still to have come through this and be able to be recovering at home with my people and that God has held me and my family through all of it.

In the ugliest, most anxious, frightening times, He has not failed me.

The artist Nightbirde, known from America’s Got Talent, who is now battling metastatic cancer, wrote this stunning blog post called, “God Is On The Bathroom Floor,” about her journey – and it just speaks to my heart in a way I can’t explain.

Here is a beautiful reading of it:

And, because I love it so, here is the full text:

I don’t remember most of Autumn, because I lost my mind late in the summer and for a long time after that, I wasn’t in my body. I was a lightbulb buzzing somewhere far.

After the doctor told me I was dying, and after the man I married said he didn’t love me anymore, I chased a miracle in California and sixteen weeks later, I got it. The cancer was gone. But when my brain caught up with it all, something broke. I later found out that all the tragedy at once had caused a physical head trauma, and my brain was sending false signals of excruciating pain and panic.

I spent three months propped against the wall. On nights that I could not sleep, I laid in the tub like an insect, staring at my reflection in the shower knob. I vomited until I was hollow. I rolled up under my robe on the tile. The bathroom floor became my place to hide, where I could scream and be ugly; where I could sob and spit and eventually doze off, happy to be asleep, even with my head on the toilet.

I have had cancer three times now, and I have barely passed thirty. There are times when I wonder what I must have done to deserve such a story. I fear sometimes that when I die and meet with God, that He will say I disappointed Him, or offended Him, or failed Him. Maybe He’ll say I just never learned the lesson, or that I wasn’t grateful enough. But one thing I know for sure is this: He can never say that He did not know me.

I am God’s downstairs neighbor, banging on the ceiling with a broomstick. I show up at His door every day. Sometimes with songs, sometimes with curses. Sometimes apologies, gifts, questions, demands. Sometimes I use my key under the mat to let myself in. Other times, I sulk outside until He opens the door to me Himself.

I have called Him a cheat and a liar, and I meant it. I have told Him I wanted to die, and I meant it. Tears have become the only prayer I know. Prayers roll over my nostrils and drip down my forearms. They fall to the ground as I reach for Him. These are the prayers I repeat night and day; sunrise, sunset.

Call me bitter if you want to—that’s fair. Count me among the angry, the cynical, the offended, the hardened. But count me also among the friends of God. For I have seen Him in rare form. I have felt His exhale, laid in His shadow, squinted to read the message He wrote for me in the grout: “I’m sad too.”

If an explanation would help, He would write me one—I know it. But maybe an explanation would only start an argument between us—and I don’t want to argue with God. I want to lay in a hammock with Him and trace the veins in His arms.

I remind myself that I’m praying to the God who let the Israelites stay lost for decades. They begged to arrive in the Promised Land, but instead He let them wander, answering prayers they didn’t pray. For forty years, their shoes didn’t wear out. Fire lit their path each night. Every morning, He sent them mercy-bread from heaven.

I look hard for the answers to the prayers that I didn’t pray. I look for the mercy-bread that He promised to bake fresh for me each morning. The Israelites called it manna, which means “what is it?”

That’s the same question I’m asking—again, and again. There’s mercy here somewhere—but what is it? What is it? What is it?

I see mercy in the dusty sunlight that outlines the trees, in my mother’s crooked hands, in the blanket my friend left for me, in the harmony of the wind chimes. It’s not the mercy that I asked for, but it is mercy nonetheless. And I learn a new prayer: thank you. It’s a prayer I don’t mean yet, but will repeat until I do.

Call me cursed, call me lost, call me scorned. But that’s not all. Call me chosen, blessed, sought-after. Call me the one who God whispers his secrets to. I am the one whose belly is filled with loaves of mercy that were hidden for me.

Even on days when I’m not so sick, sometimes I go lay on the mat in the afternoon light to listen for Him. I know it sounds crazy, and I can’t really explain it, but God is in there—even now. I have heard it said that some people can’t see God because they won’t look low enough, and it’s true.

If you can’t see him, look lower. God is on the bathroom floor.

— Nightbirde, God Is On The Bathroom Floor

I think I love it dearly because I recognize it so well, especially when the oh-so-serious diagnosis come and it’s more frightening than I know how to admit and the anxieties just absolutely kick my ass.

It’s then that He has always found me too, on the bathroom floor.

And I am so so thankful.