In my last blog, I quoted a song by Laura Story that contains the phrase, What if trials of this life are your mercies in disguise? Several days later in my Upper Room devotional, the author told of praying that a suspicious mole on her arm would disappear without medical intervention. Her prayer wasn’t answered, so she went to a dermatologist.

To her surprise, the doctor wanted to biopsy another spot on her skin─one that hadn’t concerned the author at all. When the results came back, the second site, rather than the first, was diagnosed as early-stage melanoma, a deadly form of skin cancer. If God had answered her prayer for the first mole to go away, the other spot would have gone undiscovered. Her unanswered prayer was a blessing in disguise.

Over the next week or so, I kept hearing the phrase, “blessing in disguise.” The staff at the Comfort Inn where our Beiler Reunion was held forgot to set up the Conference Room for us. Donn and I swept, scrubbed tables and set up the room ourselves which resulted in a $40 discount. Donn suggested that perhaps it had been a “blessing in disguise” that Wendy had forgotten to set up the room.

All of this prompted me to think about other times when God had given me or others “blessings in disguise.” The biggest was the timing of our twins’ birth. At my eight-month visit with Donn still in graduate school, my Dr. suggested there might be two babies. I said, “We can’t have twins. We live in an efficiency apartment!”* Donn was undaunted by the news, but I was appalled at the terrible timing of this event.

As it turned out, Donn’s semester break came right after our twins’ birth, May 15, 1973, so he could help 24/7 to feed

babies, wash diapers, make formula, and carry laundry up and down the stairs. Even after he went back to school, he came home between classes to help with all these responsibilities for the first seven months. (By God’s grace, he did all this and still graduated from Purdue with a 5.82 GPA. Purdue used a 6.0 GPA equivalent to most schools 4.0 GPA)

Even so, it wasn’t until Donn went to work in January of 1974 and I began caring for Angie and Robbie alone in our three-bedroom house that I recognized the timing of their birth as a “blessing in disguise.” How wise our Heavenly Father had been to give us our twins while their earthly father’s schedule allowed him to help with all the tasks that would have overwhelmed me alone. I realized it had also been a “blessing in disguise” to have only a small apartment to keep clean during those early months.

Sometimes, blessings in disguise are even more difficult to recognize than ours. Years ago I heard a speaker tell about the death of her son. She said he was on fire for the Lord and had a bright future of service for Him when he was killed in a car accident. As she stood beside his casket, she told the Lord, “No good will ever come from this!” The words were barely out of her mouth when her prodigal daughter came and said, “Mom, I want to come back to the Lord so I’ll see Steven* again some day.”

In retrospect, I realize that our inability to recognize “blessings in disguise” are often “Theology 101:I’m Not God” occasions. We don’t have the advantage of seeing things from God’s perspective, only from our own. We may recognize the blessing later, but during those in between times: We need to evaluate our circumstances in light of God’s character, not evaluate God’s character in light of our circumstances (Bruce Wilkinson).

Father, help us not to malign your name when our circumstances make it difficult to recognize blessings in disguise. Enable us to trust that you work all things together for good to those that love you and are called according to your purpose (Romans 8:28). Amen.

* Our apartment was in the upper right hand side.

**Name unknown.