In case you were wondering, I have no answer for the following questions:
"Why did God let my son kill himself last night, why yesterday, while my mother is dying and I am waiting to hear back from my doctor to find out if I have a terminal illness too? Why would a loving God do that?"
Insert image here of my pt lying in bed, daughter literally holding the phone in one hand waiting on her doctor to call her and in her other hand is her son's baby book.
The one thing I know, is that the more days go by, the better I know God, the fewer answers I have.
I know who He is. He is love.
However, I don't understand. I won't sugar coat life and I refuse to dress up death. I will not give standard answers.
Sometimes, pain is so deep that even the promise of heaven isn't enough.
I answered her with a question of my own, "do you feel like Job?" I said. She said "yes." I softly said that the one thing about Job is that God walked him through it. I can't imagine the pain, but God was still there. I told her that God would walk with her through this journey. This horrible, awful, mother's worst nightmare journey.
"But why my son? Why now?"
I mustered out, "God agrees with you today...about this...He too calls death an enemy." That's all I had for her. It is an enemy. He conquered it, but until Jesus returns we all face this enemy somehow, someway.
She said, "I don't know if I can believe in God right now."
I told her that was okay.
What else could I have said? She now had her luggage in hand to go to her son's funeral.
What else could I have said?
What else?
I must type these things out so they can get outside of my head. Letting my fingers tell the story on the keyboard somehow stops swirling conversations in my head.
I love God. I love my family. I love my job. Sometimes, I don't understand any of those three things. But love, is always the best.
"Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God." I John 4:7
My job is not to have answers. My job is to love others with the love God gives to me.
Regardless of your occupation, that's your job too.
2 comments:
I could not imagine this level of pain, and I've been through my own hell recently.
God is good every day, but this cursed world can hide Him at times.
Say hi to your husband for me.
Hey Allison. I just cried and cried when I read your post because it is just so sad. It is so sad the things that are laid on people's lives.
I have been faced with similar questions though work and have turned them around in my own life.
What I know is that we are all part of this big masterpiece in which God is the artist and though the bad things in life are not of God, he will use them in this masterpiece that we can not always understand or see the beauty of. But we can see the beauty of our life when we are open to the different permutations of beauty and accept our lives as they are, instead of focusing on what we wish they were or thought they were or were told they would be.
I know that though we may think there are specific things we would change about our life, we can never know if those changes would really make things better (ever see the movie Butterfly Effect?)
I know that prayer is a way to transform our lives, not our circumstances (thought by transforming us, we may transform our circumstances)
I love that you say you won't give standard answers.
I would have told the woman the same, that it was okay if she didn't think she could believe in God right now because God knows our hearts and sees through our anger and hurt and doesn't leave use because of it, because that is love.
"Sometimes, pain is so deep that even the promise of heaven isn't enough." I love this line because it is very achingly true. There is a depth of pain in which heaven seems no longer seems relevant to us, not the heaven we knew of before. But I think, when in that depth, if in some parts of our heart we are still hoping for God, then we can discover a whole other idea of heaven.
Sorry for the book of a post, I will be praying for you and your wellspring of love and for your family- it made me feel so good to know you are praying for me :)
"Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see"(Heb. 11:1, NIV).
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