Today we have a guest post that I’m SUPER excited about. Hannah has guest posted on this blog before, and I’m delighted to welcome her back. Today she is sharing about a topic I’ve been wrestling with a lot lately: going to college when it means taking risks. The future can be scary, especially with a chronic illness, but Hannah offers some truth and comfort a lot of us need to hear.

Have you ever looked into your future and realized . . . it won’t happen like you thought?

When I was six years old, I had my first anaphylactic reaction. We were totally unprepared. And “scary” doesn’t even come close. It was the first of two (verifiable) anaphylactic episodes I would have in the next ten years. And it was the first of dozens of similar reactions, as well as hundreds of minor, almost imperceptible ones.

See, my body handles food allergies in a kind of unusual way. Or at least, in a way that I haven’t heard anyone talk about. I end up having the full range of reactions to wheat – everything from minor sinus inflammation to a severely compromised immune system to full-blown anaphylaxis. And I never know how much or how little it will take to trigger one of those responses.

It has taken us years to start to understand how my allergies are triggered and how to manage them. But for most of my life, this condition didn’t bother me that much. Oh, there was the occasional sleep-over I had to say no to and there was the event with my youth group I had to renege on – too much possible exposure – but this was just life.

I didn’t know anything else. 

Then I got towards my senior year of high school. I watched friends around me move away, become missionaries, go to college. And I started to feel just a little unsettled with my plan to live at home for a while.

I looked into college. I got the information, got a campus tour, and, against my better judgement, I got excited. Until, just a week later, I got sick. I suffered from a horrible chest cold, combined with environmental allergies and the effects of wheat exposure, for the next month. “College” was a daunting and impossible dream.

So I gave up on it. Then it came back around and I gave up on it again. (I was pretty wrecked.)

Through the entire process, one word kept coming back to me: “CHOOSE.”

No sign came. There was no miraculous healing. In fact, I kept having minor reactions on an almost weekly basis. And yet I kept hearing a still, small voice: “CHOOSE.”

During that time, we received an interesting bit of news from the college I’d looked into. They apparently went out of their way to accommodate people with allergies, going so far as to have separate dining arrangements. This wouldn’t protect me on the rest of the campus or even in my dorm, but it was encouraging.

And I finally decided to go to college.

I had feared more than anything that I would make that decision based on the strong emotional draw of going to college. And yet, after I made the decision, God did something amazing.

He took away my fear.

All of it.

And He replaced it with confidence, grace, and hope.

So next fall will begin a new chapter of my walk with the Lord (and with food allergies). But I could not possibly have more peace with it than I do right now. Am I worried about the inevitable wheat exposure? Yes. But I know my God is in this, and because of that, I can be confident.

When you trust Him, He can make you walk on water. The very thing that causes fear in your future, could be the very thing He causes you to overcome.

Peace out. <3