Living with long-term trials

By OAC Missionaries, Andrew and Catherine Walkington

James 1:2 tells us to “count it joy… when you meet trials of various kinds”, but I think for most of us, if we’re honest, that’s something we really struggle to do. Trials are real things that all of us will experience at some point. Financial difficulties, relational conflict, problems with our children, or in the workplace. Most of us struggle to rejoice during the hard things that God permits in our lives.

For us it was a long-term medical situation. In July 2024, Catherine started to experience persistent daily vertigo. She describes it as the sensation that your head is spinning, even though you know it’s not. She would feel like her head was being pulled backwards and to the left, and that the ground she was walking on was uneven. Visually, it would look like things were moving and distorting when she knew they weren’t, and this would happen any time she encountered a light source that flickered or flashed like fluorescent light bulbs, traffic lights, and computer or phone screens. The result was incapacitating and a complete loss of ability to do normal day-to-day life.

The first couple of months were scary as we tested and waited for results. We ruled out cancer, brain tumours and other potentially fatal issues. But not having answers was very hard.

After six months we got a diagnosis of vestibular migraines, a form of migraine that disrupts the brain but doesn’t result in pain. The first couple of medications we tried had serious side effects on Catherine’s blood pressure. Giving medication a break, we were blessed to find a Christian vestibular physio whose treatment provided some relief. In December 2025, we were pointed to a medication designed to combat seizures, which has helped to reduce the symptoms. Little by little, things are improving, but this might prove to be a life-long situation.

This made Catherine’s life very difficult. She could no longer drive a car and couldn’t enter shops. She had to cope with a substantial reduction in her daily capacity as she needed to rest and reset her balance. “Normal” daily tasks became intense difficulties – cooking a meal, showering, doing basic housework. It was sometimes weeks at a time that she didn’t even leave the house. Perhaps hardest of all, she found it very difficult to attend church which meant that she became relationally isolated.

How has this trial impacted us spiritually? What are the lessons we’ve needed to learn along the way? Before I share these lessons, I need to point something out.

Intellectually, both Catherine and I know what the right answers are supposed to be. We know our Bible well and have good theology. We know that God allows things into our life because He is sovereign. We also know that God loves us and purposes good for us. We know that trials are used by Him to grow us.

But when the rubber meets the road and we must apply that good theology to our own circumstance, we start to ask questions that show that the head knowledge has not yet moved to the heart. Why has God allowed this hard thing into my life? What is His purpose in this? Wouldn’t I be better off without this? How is it loving if God can stop this and chooses not to?

We struggled with how this impacted ministry. In my case, I know that my wife is supposed to be my first ministry (Eph 5:25), followed closely by my children. It’s easy to love my wife and lay my life down for her when things are going well and not much is being asked of me. It’s another thing to be the sole driver for the family for almost 2 years, or when she has an extra rough week and I need to take up much of her daily domestic duties. I had to wrestle with how this impacted the time I could give to ministry, while being confronted with the fact that I tended to find some of my own worth and value in the ministry that I was achieving.

When I asked Catherine to share what she has learned, she highlighted these things in particular:

1. One of the earliest lessons was to remember that God does not owe us an explanation nor a solution. We are the clay, He is the potter – we don’t get to protest. The statement “doing better than I deserve” is more than a pious cliché. It reminds us daily of God’s kindness in Christ and encourages us to look at the ways He has blessed us beyond what we deserve. We still have somewhere to live, good food, access to medicine, a wonderful church, employment, and so much more. We need to grow in daily gratitude, not just give thanks at a meal.
2. It’s easy to look at others with envy. Catherine shares of feeling so frustrated when others would speak of the “trials” they were experiencing that were nothing like her own hardship. What right did they have to complain? She recalls how Peter looked back at John in John 21 and asked Jesus what would become of him. Jesus’s response was essentially “mind your own business”! You and I don’t get to look at others and compare our lots. We are simply to trust that what Jesus has planned for us is the best thing, even if we struggle to see it now.
3. A dear friend in church who also lives with chronic illness reminded Catherine that our daily goal is to glorify God. If you needed something in which to glorify God today, then God will give you what is needed to achieve that. If you haven’t got a particular capacity on any given day, then you didn’t need that to bring glory to God.
4. Catherine has learned to depend on God for many small daily things, and this has increased her prayer life. Even showering safely causes her to pray for help and then thank God when she gets through it. Small things that we take for granted have become the occasion for prayer and communion with God.
5. While Catherine is regularly frustrated that she is not back to “normal”, and might never be, she has found great comfort in the thought that God wouldn’t take her through something like this to put her back the way she was before.

We have seen hard seasons before, and have learned that sometimes you can see some of God’s purpose with hindsight. However, we might not understand some things until eternity. We don’t believe that Job understood his trials at any point and yet he was determined to glorify God in them.

At the start of this post, I quoted from James 1:2 saying that we should rejoice in our trials. James then goes on to tell us why we should count it joy: “for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing” (James 1:3-4). The trials that God allows into our life are custom designed to make us steadfast – a confident, enduring, and unwavering trust in God. The more our life rocks and sways, the more we hold on tight to our loving Father who protects us and cares for us. James also says that this is a part of God perfecting us. The fires of our trial have the effect of burning away the dross in our life such as our wrong thinking and responses, or our self-dependency.

I’d love to say that we have rejoiced our way through these trials, but that wouldn’t be true! There have been tears, frustrations, tough times of prayer, feelings of isolation, and much more. But ultimately, God has used this to grow us and through that we have praised Him and rejoiced. While we still hope for Catherine’s full healing, we also know that might never happen and we want to learn to rejoice IN our trials.

How about you? What trials are you currently experiencing? If there are none now, what about in past years?

I would encourage you to take the time to consider the ways that God is using your trial to grow you to be more like Christ. Knowing won’t make the trial go away or make it end faster, but it may allow you to rejoice. May you face your trials like Job:

The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” (Job 1:21)