“Yet!”
This one simple word fell like music on my ears giving me permission to grab hold of one last glimmer of hope.
It had been 5 weeks since my 73-year-old mother slipped into a coma and become unresponsive to any form of medical treatment. 7 doctors offered no answers as day after day I watched a little more of my mother slipping away.
One by one, doctors began suggesting we look for a long-term facility where we could transfer her to. It was their opinion; my mother would never be more than in a vegetative state.
The most discouraging news came one morning when a doctor making his morning rounds shone a light into my mother’s eyes and referred to them as “doll eyes”. Asking what he meant, he explained that her eyes were “glassy and hollow” and no longer held a spark of “life” behind them anymore.
Exhausted from my own lack of sleep, I stepped outside the ICU room and into the hall by the nurses’ station. Looking up, I vaguely recognized one of the aides walking by but couldn’t place where I knew him from.
I hesitated as I approached this man to introduce myself. To my surprise, it was the same man whose Sunday School class I had attended over twenty years earlier.
No longer able to hold back my tears, I choked out the words, ““My mom has been in a coma for 5 weeks and she still hasn’t woken up!”
Without a moment’s hesitation, my friend put his arm around me and grinned.
“Yet!”, he said.
“Your mom hasn’t woken up yet!”
That one word went off like rockets inside me. I grasped and held tighter to that one little word than anything ever before.
It has now been 8 years since my mother was in that 5 week coma. While it was not always an easy road, my friend was right. My mom just hadn’t woken up YET.
Her story didn’t end there.
On the day we were supposed to give a final decision on whether or not to take my mother off her life support, she surprised us all and slowly began the process of waking up.
Over the course of the next few weeks and months, I am happy to say that she made a complete recovery and continues to live a full life.
As I look back, I fully believe my friend was ordained to be in just the right place at just the right time to speak that word of encouragement to me.
Sometimes, we all need to be reminded that circumstances we are faced with can seem overpowering and make it easy to lose sight of our hope.
When we come face to face with disappointment and discouragement, remember to grab onto hope and that small but powerful word; “YET!”
That perfect job you’ve been waiting on? You haven’t found it …YET
The life passion and purpose you’ve been searching for? You haven’t uncovered it…YET
Those doors you’ve been knocking on that seem forever beyond your reach? The right doors haven’t opened…YET
The dreams God has placed inside your heart that haven’t come to fruition? They haven’t come to fruition…YET
The relationships you’ve been asking God to restore? You haven’t seen them restored…YET
Reflecting back, I am reminded of something my pastor, Billy Joe Daugherty, once said;
“It’s not over until it’s over, and it’s not over YET!”
As we walk into this new year of 2022, I invite you to join me in choosing to hold on to the possibility and promise that can come from embracing the word, “YET!”
My Mom in Her Coma in 2014 
My Mom and I – Christmas 2021