Figuring Out Your Season of Trial

Many of you may not know that this author is—underneath all the words—a numbers gal. I couldn’t get enough of math in high school and college, and ended up with a master’s degree in Tax Accounting and a CPA license (after first declaring Engineering as a major). Then, for a 25-year season, I taught at the college level: Accounting, Business Math, Finance. 

Eventually, the right side of my brain started feeling neglected, so I started writing.

But numbers have always had a hold on me.

NUMBERS CAN DEFINE US

In some way, numbers probably change all of us.  I’ll never forget November 27, 2015—the diagnosis date that changed my life. But I’ll also never forget August 31, 1984— a wedding date that changed my destiny. Maybe for you it was the date of that phone call or the day the casket closed. Maybe the number was an address or a test result. A survival chance or a credit score. Numbers remain with us and have an influence in so many areas of our lives.

We all have number-shaped scars. Numbers can hurt us. 

But I’m also learning that numbers can help heal us.

We all have number-shaped scars. Numbers can hurt us. 
But I’m also learning that numbers can help heal us.

lori ann wood

THE SCIENCE OF NUMBERS

I’ll bet you didn’t know there is a science called numerology that is the study of numbers and their significance in human life. (Good thing I didn’t know in college or I might have changed majors…AGAIN.)  Numerology is based on the belief that numbers have a hidden meaning and influence our lives in various ways. 

This isn’t new information to God.

Significant numbers in Scripture include 3 (divine perfection), 7 (spiritual completion), 10 (God’s authority/divine completion), 12 (God’s purposes), and—maybe especially—40.

There’s even a book in Scripture called Numbers that is based on that important number. Written by Moses during the 40 wandering years in the desert, leading God’s people through the wilderness to the brink of the Promised Land. And, maybe most importantly, showing us even now who this merciful, long-suffering God of ours is.

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF 40

Forty is a funny number, and not just in the bible. Arguably the most feared birthday, 40 is also significant for other reasons in our society: 40 below is the only temperature that is the same in both Fahrenheit and Celsius. A typical pregnancy lasts 40 weeks. Forty is the number of winks that make a perfect nap and the number of hours in a typical workweek.

I juggle lots of numbers with my health, from grams of sodium to med refill dates, from hours of sleep to pounds of weight, from blood pressure to ejection fraction, from ounces of fluids per day to number of steps per day. Yet somehow, it is that number 40 that has always brought fear into my life. Turning 40 terrified me, and every 40 in Scripture seemed to bring calamity or doom, even to the good ones. I never liked studying those 40-based stories.

I was justified in this. In Scripture, the number 40 often represents trial or testing. Moses fasted 40 days, the Israelites wandered the desert for 40 years, Noah endured 40 days and nights in the flood, Elijah suffered 40 days without food or water, Jonah warned for 40 days that Ninevah was in trouble, and the apostles worried and wondered for 40 days before the resurrected Jesus appeared to them. Perhaps the most well-known 40-day period is the one Jesus endured in the desert before beginning his public ministry (the framework of my book).

But there is more to 40 than suffering. From my journal, 40 days deep into my diagnosis:

Waiting for the results of more tests. Not expecting anything good, honestly. It’s funny, because the reality is living right inside me but I need those external numbers to tell me how I’m doing. The doctors have obviously lost hope in a quick turnaround. For heart failure, very few get better, especially those with numbers as bad as mine. Those that do climb out of this ditch, do so very quickly. Yet, in retrospect, I feel a strange gift from these past 40 days. God has given me a chance to see and savor my days (days that have always been numbered) and I am grateful.

THE OTHER SIDE OF 40

Last weekend we celebrated our 40^th wedding anniversary. And unlike my 40^th birthday or the first 40 days of heart failure, it didn’t scare me at all. Though I still am shocked at how we got here so quickly. I am reminded of a line from a poem I memorized in my 20s, somehow knowing it would someday apply: 

What’s the secret of the trick? 

How’d I get so old, so quick?

Unknown Source

The truth is, numbers don’t make our reality. Only God does that. 

But numbers can represent some important parts of our real-life story.

And even more than just symbolizing or reflecting what’s going on, numbers can help us know, remember, and change. 

Numbers are lifeless and boring abstractions, yet for each of us there are some that are so charged that, if we happen to be paying attention, they can make our hearts skip a beat. The year somebody we loved was born or died. A telephone number we may not have called for twenty years. The number of steps there were to climb to our bedroom as a child. The age we were when we first fell in love. Uninteresting as they are in themselves, numbers remind us that, if we have our wits about us, almost anything we look at has treasure buried in it.

Frederick Buechner

Something I missed most of my life is that more than just testing, the number 40 holds a treasure: Forty is also God’s environment for change. God never leaves us in our trials. So 40 also indicates deep transformation is coming.  Forty represents a new set of instructions for a new phase in life. 

At the far end of every 40-based trial in Scripture, you’ll find a transformation:

• The cleansing of evil from the world after the flood,
• The journey out of bondage into the Promised Land,
• The beginning of Jesus’s public ministry after the desert temptations,
• The birth of the church after Pentecost.

If you are in the middle of a hard trial or what seems like a harsh test, His transformation can follow your season of 40, too. However your world might be shaking or reshaping, God’s got you.

Because 40 tells us this: Suffering is so expensive and so precious, a merciful God cannot let it be wasted.

Suffering is so expensive and so precious,
a merciful God cannot let it be wasted.

lori ann wood

This is our God.  The God who brings His child full circle from testing to triumph.

For all those willing to journey with Him. 

Through any number of seasons.

-AN INVITATION-

Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.

Psalm 90:12, NIV

As we move past Labor Day, it feels like a new year, a new start, doesn’t it? It seems a good time to move into a season of change—a season of 40.

I want to invite you into a special event. I will be hosting a 40-day online faith transformation, based on my book Divine Detour: The Path You’d Never Choose Can Lead to the Faith You’ve Always Wanted. It will begin Sept 20, which will allow us 40 days before the end of October, and the crush of the holidays hit. 

It will be a simple, but with so much goodness. 

What you’ll do:

• Read just one essay in the book per day for 40 days (or a handful each weekend, if that’s easier). 

• Highlight any sentences that jump out at you for any reason, and whenever you get a chance each week, email them to me at this address. 

What you’ll get:

• Each Saturday, I’ll share some social media images for you to use based on what you chose as the most popular quotes from the book. 

• At the end of 40 days, on October 29 at 7pm Central, I’ll host a live Zoom with those who’d like to discuss more about the book, their own journey, holding onto faith in hard times, etc. During the Zoom meeting, I’ll draw a name from those present for your choice of (1) the Divine Detour audiobook, or (2) a signed copy of both Divine Detour and the Companion Journal (mailed to recipient of your choice).  

• All participants who share the images at least once a week on social media will receive a collection of special Divine Detour stickers (including a signed bookplate) in the mail directly from me.

So, if you have just 10 minutes a day over the next 40 days to reboot your travel-weary faith, let me know you’re in HERE. (The first ten who register will get a digital copy of the Companion Journal FREE!) 

This numbers gal would be honored to walk a bit of your detour with you.

And you’ll be well on your way to the transformation God has for you on the other side of your own 40-day story.

Listen to this post read by the author HERE.