The traffic would not move fast enough. The red lights were longer than I ever remember, and more of them. The normally 25-minute drive to my daughter’s apartment took two hours in my head. I tried the phone three more times as I moved along in seemingly slow motion. Same result; no answer.

Is it normal for any parent to expect the worst?

I had been with her the night before as an extremely high fever broke and some of the pain in her muscles subsided after an onslaught of the most debilitating attack of something nasty in her blood stream. It’s been two months since Anne’s surfing accident fractured her jaw in four places. (One of the doctors said it was the worst he’d ever seen in 40 years of practice on a patient who lived to tell about it, including those who didn’t.)

“Annie is one tough cookie,” he said. And because I knew she was, I had left her and returned home since she seemed to be stable again. Who knows that it could be her body catching up to the trauma she’d been through in the last two months. And now added to that is the depressing news that the fractures have not been healing properly and she is going to have to have another surgery. It’s going to be a while before Anne gets on the other side of this ordeal.

Coupled with the pain of the night before is her knowledge, as a doctor herself, of all the possible ramifications of her symptoms. Of course she had to share with me the worst case scenarios of her self-diagnosis. Septic shock … Spinal meningitis … All of them potentially fatal. So is it any wonder what I’m thinking yesterday morning as I drive to check up on her because she’s not answering her phone?

I had no choice. Once the awful thought was in my mind, it took hold so tightly that I was emotionally incapable of doing anything else but check up on her.

So it was that I was in an anxious state of mind when I finally got to her apartment, opened the door, called out her name, and heard the sweetest sound coming back at me: “Papa!”

Did you know that we cry the same thing to our Father God. “…but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, ‘Abba! Father!’” (Romans 8:15). And did you also know that your voice calling “Abba! Father!” is the sweetest sound in the universe to His ears? It is. And I know what that’s like now.

Therefore, since we have been made right in God’s sight by faith, we have peace with God because of what Jesus Christ our Lord has done for us. Because of our faith, Christ has brought us into this place of undeserved privilege where we now stand, and we confidently and joyfully look forward to sharing God’s glory.

We can rejoice, too, when we run into problems and trials, for we know that they help us develop endurance. And endurance develops strength of character, and character strengthens our confident hope of salvation. And this hope will not lead to disappointment. For we know how dearly God loves us, because he has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with his love. (Romans 5:1-5)