Footprints in the Sand, Part II

During these months dealing with my TBI, I’m learning lowly, stubbornly, and sometimes tearfully that discipleship isn’t measured by efficiency. This week, the poem Footprints in the Sand continues to find me again. For the first time in Vancouver, full of sunshine and the start of flowers, I slowly believe there is hope. The hope of restoration and renewal is slowly rising. A restoration to not who Joshua was, but to a new version of Joshua. I know the Lord is creating and refining a better version, a version who will use his journey of TBI (Training Betterment Internally) to wherever the Lord leads these sets of footprints.

"I don’t understand why, when I needed You the most, You would leave me?" I’ve asked that question in more ways than I can count, sometimes out loud, sometimes silently, sometimes with tears streaming down my face. Most days my body, soul, and heart feel unfamiliar and my mind feels slower. It’s easy to interpret that as distance. There are times, I say - Heavenly Father I feel You stepped back right when I reached out. When pain stacks on pain, physical limitations, fatigue, the humiliation of not being able to do what once felt effortless in music, in medicine, in ministry, as Joshua Michael-Sievers — the question sharpens. If You are good, if You are near, why does it feel like I’m walking alone?

Lately I’m learning to notice that God’s quiet isn’t the same as God’s absence—because Zephaniah 3:17 paints a different picture of what “near” can look like. The Lord is not standing far off, waiting for me to perform strength; He is with me, mighty to save. This is a reminder: when I can’t hear Him the way I want to, He is still actively present. On the weeks I don't go to church or complete ministerial tasks, I can't imagine that our Lord is rejoicing over me with gladness, quieting me with His love, singing over me. That means the silence isn’t punishment; it can be the tenderness of a God who calms what is frantic in me and steadies what is shaky. 

He whispered, “My precious child, I love you and will never leave you.” That whisper has started to sound less like a poetic line and more like a daily reality. In the small graces—timely messages, gentle check-ins, appointments finally being scheduled—I’m sensing that God’s love shows up not only as comfort inside me, but as care around me. I’m learning that God’s hand often feels like hands, plural: people and processes and practical provision arriving in ways I couldn’t manufacture. It’s not always the miracle I imagined, but it is mercy I can recognize.

At the start of my spiritual journey at Easter 2024, when I returned to playing in Baptist Churches for the first time in almost over two decades, I began to see and feel what being "left behind" meant. Not to myself from the Lord, but to those I had done so in Canada, those who I abandoned for a life in Germany. I did the same in Germany, choosing to focus on my patients and ministerial flock there, than those at home, where I was dedicated, christened, and baptized for Ministry. Now I realize “being left” by the Lord, may actually have been mercy: not a dramatic rescue, but a faithful carrying. The Lord and a few of my siblings in Christ have a love that will not let me go. A love that carries me as a second set of footprints, when I don’t or didn't have the capacity to hold myself. A love that believes in restoral and renewal. A love that brings back those lost sheep or black sheep to a church. It’s humbling to admit how quickly my heart and actions build distance when life or members of the Body of Christ hurt me. This Valentine's Day my thoughts are not on those who hurt me. I do not ruminate on the Doctors or Pastors within the Assemblies of God or Canadian Baptists of Western Canada, who make me want to abandon the concept of church. I look beyond the hurt for the first time in weeks and think of those who radiate Love. One image radiant in love is that of  sweet and tender Rev. Sherrolyn Riley in her brown ministerial robes at the pulpit of United Baptist Church of Mahone Bay, leading her flock in "I know who holds tomorrow!". The ministerial tasks I have done in Canada, were all because she opened those green Church doors in Mahone Bay for me, and made space for me to be present.

I’m starting to believe and trust in the Lord and others carrying me now—not just as a comforting idea, but as a framework for this season. If I’m being carried, then I can stop treating my limits as failure and start treating them as a place where love is allowed to be real: received, not achieved. So I’m asking for continued prayer—not only that these appointments go well and lead to clarity and relief, but also that my heart stays soft. Help me receive what I cannot produce, ask when I’m afraid to ask, and trust that being carried is not weakness, but love. There are days that I need confirmation from our Lord to interrupt my fear before it becomes a conclusion. Trials don’t only test my body—they test my interpretation of God and the Church. When I’m tempted to believe that suffering equals abandonment, I’m asking for the grace to pause and remember what is true even when I don’t feel it. This valley with a TBI and processing trauma in the Body of Christ, doesn’t mean God is gone; it means I’m in a place where I need God differently—more slowly, more steadily, more practically.

As we close this week, on a day that we celebrate Love, I have a tangible update that feels like a small testimony of Steadfast Love that never ceases. Not only from the Lord, but the steadfast Love of the bodies of Christ that love me and stretch from Vancouver Island to Eastern Asia.  A declaration that we know who holds tomorrow and we need to trust in his timeline. I do not know what I have done to deserve the unconditional love of Jesus Christ. On a day where I do not get to be close to all those I love, due to where they serve or live, I know I am seen, heard, and prayed for - and that Love isn't defined as sitting in a flock on Sunday or performing, preaching, or reaching. 

I now have appointments lined up with specialists in sleep medicine, otorhinolaryngology, and neuro-optometry. Prayers are being answered. These are not just dates on a calendar—they’re signs of movement, doors opening, help arriving. I’m grateful, and I’m also aware that scheduling care doesn’t instantly remove symptoms. I am reminded that God often provides through ordinary channels—referrals, clinicians, assessments, and the patient work of treatment. I know that my Saviour will use his children to complete the good work he started in me some 27 years ago, when I declared him to be my King of Kings and Lord of Lords.