Yet I Will Rejoice

On the Monday before Thanksgiving 2001, I sat at our kitchen table, stunned by the words I had just heard on the phone. Our seven-year-old son played upstairs. The door opened and my husband entered, returning from work earlier than usual. I looked at him and burst out, “My mammogram revealed a lump in my left breast that looks like breast cancer.”

He looked at me and said, “My job was eliminated today.”

The next week a biopsy confirmed the diagnosis: breast cancer at age forty-two. The post-surgical pathology report delivered another blow. The cancer was aggressive and invasive. Additional surgery to determine the extent of the cancer, as well as chemo, would be required immediately.

I was overcome with fear and anxiety. I could not pray. My Bible sat next to my bed. The words would not come. I was gripped with fear of death from metastatic breast cancer and financial ruin due to the cost of treatment.

We navigated the medical appointments and challenges and tried to figure out insurance consequences and income after my husband’s job ended.

But there was one blow right after another. The day before my second surgery, our seventeen-year-old daughter developed appendicitis and needed emergency surgery.

That day my husband reached out to our Sunday School class and asked for prayer. A few hours later, I opened my computer and checked my email to keep my mind occupied and fight off fear.

My inbox was full of messages from our church friends. Each one contained a prayer, words of Scripture, and hope.

When I could not pray myself, others stepped in.

One passage became my anchor: Habakkuk 3:17–19. The prophet gives a litany of all the things that have gone wrong: “Though the fig tree should not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines, the produce of the olive fail and the fields yield no food, the flock be cut off from the fold and there be no herd in the stalls…” (v. 17). This verse records economic catastrophe: no fruit, no food, no oil, no livestock. For the agrarian society of ancient Israel, this describes the hardest times.

I felt like it described exactly where our family was. Maybe you know that feeling. The losses didn’t just arrive one at a time; they stacked up, each one landing before you’d caught your breath from the last.

The next line caused a critical shift in my thinking and behavior: “yet I will rejoice in the LORD; I will take joy in the God of my salvation” (v. 18).

“Yet.” That little word. Despite the circumstances around me, I would rejoice in the Lord and take joy in Him. The key to navigating these difficult times was rejoicing in God. It was not knowing the outcome of the surgery, though it impacted my very future. It was not having the financial plan for my husband’s unemployment, despite how practical that sounded. It was rejoicing in God without having all the answers, without having a safety net.

The phrase, “Yet I will rejoice,” became my response to each challenge we faced. And they kept coming for a while. Each day I intentionally chose to rejoice instead of fear. I chose to rejoice instead of worry. I chose to rejoice when the answers I desperately wanted didn’t come at all.

That kind of choosing sounds impossible when you are inside it. I understand. But here’s what makes it possible (and newsflash—it’s not willpower!).

It was enabled by what the second half of that passage points to: the joy of my salvation and the One who promises it. It’s not my situation that drives my joy. It’s my salvation.

The prophet Habakkuk expresses confidence that the Lord will ultimately bring about his deliverance from the situation he describes. I took Habakkuk’s confidence as my own.

Something supernatural happened during this time. My relationship with the Lord grew deeper than it had ever been. I learned to be grateful not just during the hard times but for the hard times. At church, friends would tell us they were praying for us. I would joyfully say, “Thank you,” and explain that God had been so present, faithful, and purposeful in our journey that we were both filled with peace despite so much uncertainty. I learned to lean into God instead of looking for the way out or the reason this had happened and to look to Him for my joy and my comfort.

But verse 19, “he makes my feet like the deer’s; he makes me tread on my high places,” always felt like a poetic flourish to me, a visual from nature that would have been immediately familiar to the ancient reader. For me, it lacked the power that “Yet I will rejoice” held.

I was wrong. It holds the explanation for how the “yet” is even possible. I didn’t understand its lesson until I went to Israel many years later and learned something unexpected.

We were ascending a mountain during our trip, and the guide pointed out what appeared to be deer high up a sheer cliff. They were not ordinary deer, he explained; they were the Nubian ibex, which frequent the Judean wilderness where we were traveling. They are exceptional climbers whose habitat is steep cliffs and high mountains.

When these creatures are frightened, they don’t descend to reach safety. They climb even higher to steeper ground because that terrain is dangerous to their predators.

Habakkuk’s lesson from the deer is about where it is safest, not about whether it stumbles. He is saying that the heights, the hard places to reach, are actually the place of security. The deer deliberately seeks these places. Height is not dangerous; it’s the place where its God-given feet enable it to be secure.

My beloved Habakkuk passage was not a promise of rescue or a promise to be safe from the rocky terrains of life. It was not saying God would smooth out the rough places.

It was saying that God guides our footing in those places. He doesn’t rescue us from them. He gives us what we need to navigate them.

And He had done that for me during those hard months. We were not out of the woods; the challenges continued for a long time. But over time I developed deep gratitude for this hard place and rejoiced as God showed up faithfully again and again. His care was personal, specific, and so loving. Our problems were not immediately solved, but our faith and relationship with God were strengthened beyond anything we could have manufactured ourselves as we climbed our own steep cliffs.

Your hard place may not look like mine. But wherever you are standing right now, including the place that feels like a sheer cliff, is not a surprise to God. Your God-given feet can navigate the terrain that looks impossible. The high places are not your danger. They are where He enables you to be secure.

Gratitude and joy do not come naturally in the hard times. But looking back, I am so thankful that God allowed this season in my life, because it knit me to Him so deeply that I have never been the same. Our children witnessed God’s provision even in the midst of troubles. We testified to God’s goodness to neighbors and friends. And my husband and I became closer than we had ever been in our marriage.

So, when your fig tree doesn’t blossom, and the crops don’t yield, don’t give in to despair and fear. Make the intentional choice to rejoice in the God who knows exactly where you are, who has already accomplished your salvation, and who has given you the feet to navigate the journey ahead.

Prayer: Father, thank You for the hard things that knit us to You. Thank You for giving us the skill and the will to navigate the high places. When challenges come, guide our hearts and minds to say, “Yet I will rejoice,” instead of moaning, “Why me?” Remind us of the joy that comes with salvation. Give us rest and confidence in Your Son, who secured that salvation for us. In Jesus’ name, Amen.