Time to Give Up?

My husband, Mike, and I looked over our garden, the flowers drooped and drowning after a heavy storm. “What are the chances everything will survive?” Mike asked. “In these conditions, it looks slim.”

I smiled. I remembered when Mike was in the ICU, fighting for his life. One day a surgeon confided in me about a program in which he could enter certain parameters of a patient’s condition and come up with their chance of recovery. My husband’s, he told me, was ten percent. I knew Mike was dealing with several complicated conditions, all of them life-threatening. Then he’d developed a high fever, too. The doctors and nurses were doing all they could to save him, but the odds were so slim. Ten percent.

Thinking of that number had sometimes made me weaken. There were times when I’d wondered if God cared at all. But after more than a month, I brought Mike home. And many, many months later, he fully recovered.

Now, whenever I face what seem like daunting odds, I think of that number. Ten percent. Should I ever give up hope when the odds are discouraging? Never. I can’t know what the outcome may be, but there’s always a chance I can beat the odds.

And that garden? I felt pretty good about its chances too.