Originally published on Ann Voskamp’s blog, A Holy Experience, “One Key to Walking Through Suffering” was written by Bethany Hoang. Bethany co-authored The Justice Calling: Where Passion Meets Perseverance with Kristen Deede Johnson. She asks how we continue to believe that God is good, that He loves us, is a God of justice who heals and restores in the face of the extreme suffering we see in our world today. Follow the link below highlighted in red to read the article and soak up the beauty and freedom of restorative lament.
God invites our questions and pleadings rather than our despair and silence.
Love this song – it fills a spot in this grieving heart. This morning I happened to reread a journal entry I wrote July 10th. I was in a contemplative mood, I guess, because I wrote, “I get the impression that within the Christian community we believe the presence of peace equates to the absence of pain and sorrow. True peace, as I understand it, is the absence of fear – not the absence of pain, sorrow, anger, frustration, and a multitude of other emotions.” I can only think of one place in my Bible where God told someone not to mourn – Ezekiel 24: 15-27 – and as in everything else God does, there was a purpose. Ezekiel’s failure to grieve in the outward manner that was typical of the day, served as a powerful sign to the House of Israel. His unexpected, and obedient behavior ensured the prophecy God had given would be heard and remembered.
I thought I’d include the lyrics here. Words are important to me, Getting them right, matters. I think I’d change “I will shoulder the blame” to “I will shoulder the pain”, but then no one asked me!
I also added a few more comments after the lyrics – if you’ve managed to read this far, you might as well read those too!
Lyrics:
Sometimes your world just ends
It changes everything you’ve been
And all that’s left to be
Is empty, broken, lonely, hoping
I’m supposed to be strong
I’m supposed to find a way to carry on
And I don’t wanna feel better
And I don’t wanna not remember,
I will always see your face
In the shadows of this haunted place
I will laugh, I will cry, shake my fist at the sky
But I will not say goodbye
They keep saying time will heal
But the pain just gets more real
The sun comes up each day
Finds me waiting, fading, hating, praying,
If I can keep on holding on
Maybe I can keep my heart from knowing that you’re gone
And I don’t wanna feel better
I don’t wanna not remember
I will always see your face
In the shadows of this haunted place
I will laugh, I will cry, shake my fist at the sky
But I will not say goodbye
I will curse, I will pray, I will re-live everyday
I will show through the blame
I’ll shout out your name
I will laugh, I will cry, shake my fist at the sky
But I will not say
Will not say goodbye
I will not say goodbye
I will not say…
It’s true, sometimes I don’t want to feel better – but, not all the time. It is also a comfort to know that I don’t have to say good-bye. As a believer in Christ, in spite of pain in the loss, I Do Not Grieve As One Without Hope! Therefore, See you soon is far more accurate than good-bye or as the ever bouncy Tigger of Winnie the Pooh fame (the first known individ . . . er, cartoon character, known to use “chat speak” in everyday conversation) was known to say, TTFN – Ta ta for now!
“Mountain lions detect vulnerabilities in their prey and attack the weakest — the young, the sick, the injured. Studies have confirmed this instinctive cruelty. It’s how the mountain lion lives, following the scent of suffering and feasting on whatever he finds.The enemy of your hope and happiness hunts with that same instinct, with a cold-hearted and ruthless hunger for the weak or hurting. Satan prowls like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour (1 Peter 5:8). And because he’s clever . . .”
A great article on living an authentic Christian life . . . “We deprive our message of a powerful impact when we pretend to be perfect. My weakness is testimony to the power of Christ in my life.”
(Click on “view original post” highlighted in red below to read the article.)
“But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong. 2 Corinthians 12:9-10
She walked into the competition room with a face set in determination. A faint smile graced her face in recognition of the judges patiently awaiting her arrival. However, this polite acknowledgement faded the instant she found her mark, centered before the three seated personages, who were to witness her assault on the challenge before her.
She stood before a long table, which separated her from these strangers. With head slightly downcast and her arms held rigidly at her side, she appeared to be using every ounce of will containing…
Last October I came across this article (highlighted in red below) on the suicide of Patti Stevens by Rudolph Bush on the Opinion Page of The Dallas Morning News:
As a member of the bereaved parent’s group, While We’re Waiting, I’ve encountered several parents of children who’ve committed suicide. It’s heartbreaking! It’s disturbing to read of children as young as 11 years of age, taking their own lives. I can only imagine the agony, the second guessing and the questions the grief stricken families are left struggling with. The impact on the entire family when a child dies (regardless of the means of death) is staggering (but that’s an article for another day).
Journalist, Rudolph Bush covered this topic well and he certainly got it right when he said of Patti Stevens, “She was trying, in a desperate, mistaken, terrible way, to stop hurting.” Bush’s comments were made in response to critics who contend that those who commit suicide are selfish. I also appreciate that he points out, “. . . the suicidal have fallen into a place where their sadness, fear and desperation have stripped away the ability to think and act rationally.”
Still, I think it’s a serious mistake when we assume, “Things would have gotten better.” That was probably true for Patti Stevens and a multitude of others who contemplate suicide, but it’s certainly not true in every situation which is why organizations such as Death with Dignity exist. It’s why assisted suicide is a hot button issue of our day. Don’t get me wrong, I am not a proponent of suicide at all, but we are naive if we fail to recognize that, in some situations, things will get worse.** Families coping with terminal illness, with addiction, and a number of other issues know, without doubt, that their circumstances will indeed get worse. They know more pain is on the horizon and they are afraid and desperately want to escape the pending heartbreak. When it’s true that things will get worse, we have to find a way to help people cope with that truth; to find purpose and meaning in life.
We’ve all heard the popular phrase, “everything happens for a reason” at some point in time; usually when something unpleasant transpires. Tim Lawrence wrote an article on that very topic. Mr. Lawrence used his article to strike out against the culturally common advice passed to people coping with trauma and grief – advice he refers to as “the debasing of the grieving”. In the piece published on his blog entitled, “The Adversity Within”, he shares this quote from Megan Devine, “Some things in life cannot be fixed. They can only be carried.” Of Ms. Devine’s quote he says,
“These words are so poignant because they aim right at the pathetic platitudes our culture has come to embody on a increasingly hopeless level. Losing a child cannot be fixed. Being diagnosed with a debilitating illness cannot be fixed. . . They can only be carried.”
We live in a culture that demands positivity. Obstacles are opportunities in disguise. If we can’t go around said obstacle, we must find a way over, through or under it. Nothing is impossible. We will overcome. We will conquer; by sheer force of will if necessary. And the underlying message is that, should we fail, we are incompetent or didn’t try hard enough.
We’ve been indoctrinated with the message that we must be able to turn every negative into a positive. Our culture as a whole no longer helps people work through their grief, instead we demand that they set it aside, suppress it, or spin it into an uplifting message – all the better if they can tie it up with a Biblical bow. As a result, we leave hurting people enmeshed in an internal battle pitting their normal need to express and work through their pain and sorrow against societies demand to find the silver lining and move forward.
If we sincerely want to reduce the suicide rate, we all have to learn to become comfortable with the bad and ugly aspects of life instead of pretending they don’t exist or glossing over them. We need to learn to acknowledge pain, validate feelings, and affirm the broken before they lose the ability to think and act rationally. In my experience, people want to be seen, to be understood and to feel as if they are not alone when their days turn dark. People can survive almost anything – they can learn to carry that which cannot be fixed – if we provide them with those things.
**The comments in this post in no way serve as permission to take one’s own life.
Print a copy of this National Suicide Prevention Lifeline image and stick it on your refrigerator.
I too see and appreciate the tender mercies yet have not made peace with what might lie ahead as we live with ARSACS, a different form of Muscular Dystrophy than Mitchell’s family endured.
I am not simply grieving what has been lost already, but what is yet to come. Maybe, this video will help others to understand why I am so resistant to moving forward. I’m still coming to terms with the fact that everyday following December 26, 2013, has been and will be the best of times for our family, in spite of what physical skill may be surrendered to ARSACS on any given day.
Please, take a minute and watch this short video by clicking on the link below highlighted in red.
So, I try to live in the present. Sometimes life demands that I look further down the road, and sometimes I’m unable to prevent my mind from floating forward to the new eventualities, but I desperately try to control my thoughts, to avoid “kicking at the pricks” as Christ informed Paul he was doing on the road to Damascus.
Please try to understand that my hope lies in eternal things and avoid trying to help me have hope for things of this world. I’m not trying to be negative, I’m just grieving what’s been lost while simultaneously grieving what’s yet to come. It’s known as Anticipatory Grief.
I know there are not a lot of people who have walked in my shoes and have no idea what it’s like to live in a continuous grief cycle and therefore, don’t have any concept of how I think. I know that experience is the most effective way to develop empathy but before you try to remind me of my blessings please imagine living with my everyday reality.
I didn’t lose a son and two daughters and begin picking up the pieces to move into a hopeful future. I live with the knowledge that I will always be picking up broken pieces and there is no way to repair the pieces that have been falling since MD entered our lives.
Happiness may be fleeting and driven by circumstances, but joy and happiness are not equivalent. Joy is the light of the Holy Spirit’s indwelling. Unless we are consciously trying to hide it, joy seeps to the surface. It’s intangible – a silent, more subtle and substantial quality than happiness which flaunts it’s presence in spontaneous and short-lived smiles, laughter and excitement. Joy lingers, in fact it resides, within even the most wounded heart because it is the fruit of the Spirit.
Do not jump to the conclusion that families who cope with special needs, life-threatening or progressive disease live without joy and are unaware of their blessings. You might be surprised to hear them voice their deep gratitude over the smallest of accomplishments and simplest of kindnesses.
Living with great needs has a way of opening your eyes to the smallest of blessings, but it doesn’t anesthetize the painful realities of life. It’s like a downpour abating just long enough to load your daughter into the car and her wheelchair into the trunk. You are grateful, thrilled even, that you aren’t soaking wet even knowing you will still have to place the daughter of your heart back into that wheelchair when you arrive at your destination. You also know the rain might not abate when you arrive and you may still end up soaking wet. In spite of that you are still thankful that you stayed dry for the time being.
I want others to understand that none of this is easy, there are no simple answers, and I will not always be able to tie up my messy life and emotions with a Biblical bow that makes everyone, myself included, feel better.
If you haven’t already; watch the video, read Mitchell’s father’s Facebook posts. You will find a godly man who, two plus years later continues to deal with sorrow. He’s also aware there will be more darkness to navigate down the road. He ties things up with a Biblical bow better than I do; so you will appreciate his lessons and feel comfortable hearing them too. He has much of worth to share.
A fellow bereaved parent and blogger, Melanie, recently asked me if I still struggle with feeling God’s love. The question came in response to a post I published several months ago entitled, “Uncovering Unknown Issues of the Heart”. Yesterday I posted Melanie’s response assuming our conversation had ended. But Melanie and I have bonded over our desire to process our grief while simultaneously making sense of the faith that has come to sustain and define us. The foundations of our faith have not been shaken, but we still wrestle with elements of our faith. And so, our conversation continued. I’ve pretty much cut it down to the parts of theological significance. I hope our struggle to understand the God we love, the One True God, might help someone else who is struggling to make sense of their faith in light of circumstances that cast doubt on what they’ve always believed to be true about the God of Abraham, Jacob and Issac. So, here we go again . . .
Melanie: I don’t remember if I replied again to you in that conversation, but I need to tell you that your words really touched a deep place in need of healing in my spirit. I think that I have continued to feel that I am somehow responsible for my son’s death. Isn’t that ridiculous? Maybe it’s easier to blame myself than to keep wrestling with the intersection of God’s will, human choice and the goodness and love of the Father.
Job had not sinned when Satan targeted him. And God’s purpose was not to teach Job a lesson but to show Satan that His servants would continue to serve Him in spite of suffering and loss.
Janet: Melanie, thanks as always for your kind words as they encourage me as I wrestle with my own demons (so to speak) in this process of refinement. And while it’s patently untrue than you are responsible for Dominic’s death it’s not “ridiculous” that you might feel as if you are – it’s just one of those bizarre and entirely normal ways the human mind wrestles with the unacceptable in life.
Maybe this sounds a bit crazy, but I think it’s one of the ways believer’s cope with anger with God. We are afraid to be mad at Him and yet buried beneath our beliefs about His love and good plans lurks this anger we are either unaware of or we are too afraid to address. It’s easier – less frightening – to assume responsibility (or blame) ourselves than it is to open that locked box in our hearts that hides our deepest fears about God and confront those fears.
It’s transference, plain and simple (in my completely uneducated opinion). But listen to what C.S. Lewis said in “A Grief Observed”,
“Not that I am (I think) in much danger of ceasing to believe in God. The real danger is of coming to believe such dreadful things about Him. The conclusion I dread is not ‘So there’s no God after all,’ but ‘So this is what God’s really like. Deceive yourself no longer.”
So this is what God’s really like – yikes! But God not only is capable of dealing with those frightening fears about His character and the way He works, He is forcing the lid on that locked box open and demanding that we confront those fears so that He can dispel our faulty misconceptions. Those misconceptions hold us at arms length from Him and hinder the spread of the gospel to the lost because they besmirch His character and His innate holiness.
Melanie: I often refer back to Lewis’ book because it is so honest and challenging.
Something we have discussed around our table is the fact that we humans are not equipped or even capable of comprehending God in His fullness and majesty. “My thoughts are higher than your thoughts”… So we create shortcuts, paradigms and analogies that serve pretty well when things are going OK but fail miserably when they aren’t.
And often our faith communities are uncomfortable with questions or simply don’t provide space and time to ask them. (When teaching a SS lesson-how many teachers invite real questions?) I get it–who wants to stand in front of a classroom and admit you just don’t know?
But we who have experienced great pain must confront and decide. Who is this God we claim to serve and follow? What does love really look like? Can we learn to live with unanswered questions?
Janet: Exactly! It’s not disrespectful and it’s not heretical. “Come let us reason together!” It’s required if we wish to have a relationship with the Lord that has deep roots and bears fruit. I don’t want to be the cursed fig tree.
Jesus Curses the Fig Tree – Mark 11:12-14
12 On the following day, when they came from Bethany, he was hungry. 13 And seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to see if he could find anything on it. When he came to it, he found nothing but leaves, for it was not the season for figs. 14 And he said to it, “May no one ever eat fruit from you again.” And his disciples heard it.
What on earth does it mean when I say that I don’t want to be the cursed fig tree?
The fig tree is a symbolic reference to the nation of Israel. The story of the cursed fig tree is told in both the gospel of Matthew and Mark and according to the Biblical accounts occurred the week before Christ’s death on the cross. Christ is welcomed to Jerusalem on Palm Sunday and hailed as Messiah in an event known as The Triumphal Entry. Jerusalem is overrun by worshipers coming to celebrate Passover. By comparing the accounts in Matthew and Mark we find Jesus returning to Jerusalem the next day when He encounters the fig tree. The fruit on fig trees appear before the leaves. So, it was a reasonable expectation that a fig tree with leaves would also have fruit; regardless of the season. Even so, why curse a fruitless tree? Matthew and Mark also tell us that after cursing the fig tree Jesus continued on to Jerusalem where he proceeded to cleanse the Temple of the money changers. The next day, as Jesus and the disciples again return to Jerusalem, they pass the cursed fig tree and find it withered.
Still confused? Gotquestions.org explains the significance of both the cursed fig tree and the cleansing of the Temple as follows:
“Jesus had just arrived at Jerusalem amid great fanfare and great expectations, but then proceeds to cleanse the Temple and curse the barren fig tree. Both had significance as to the spiritual condition of Israel. With His cleansing of the Temple and His criticism of the worship that was going on there (Matthew 21:13; Mark 11:17), Jesus was effectively denouncing Israel’s worship of God. With the cursing of the fig tree, He was symbolically denouncing Israel as a nation and, in a sense, even denouncing unfruitful “Christians” (that is, people who profess to be Christian but have no evidence of a relationship with Christ).”
“The presence of a fruitful fig tree was considered to be a symbol of blessing and prosperity for the nation of Israel. Likewise, the absence or death of a fig tree would symbolize judgment and rejection. Symbolically, the fig tree represented the spiritual deadness of Israel, who while very religious outwardly with all the sacrifices and ceremonies, were spiritually barren because of their sins. By cleansing the Temple and cursing the fig tree, causing it to whither and die, Jesus was pronouncing His coming judgment of Israel and demonstrating His power to carry it out. It also teaches the principle that religious profession and observance are not enough to guarantee salvation, unless there is the fruit of genuine salvation evidenced in the life of the person. James would later echo this truth when he wrote that “faith without works is dead” (James 2:26). The lesson of the fig tree is that we should bear spiritual fruit (Galatians 5:22-23), not just give an appearance of religiosity. God judges fruitlessness, and expects that those who have a relationship with Him will “bear much fruit” (John 15:5-8).”
I don’t want to be an unfruitful Christian. I will wrestle, I will struggle, I will confront, and I may pout and complain and whine and moan along the way, but I’ve come too far, been through too much to quit now! I hope you feel the same way.
A fellow bereaved parent and blogger, Melanie, recently sent me the following question in regards to “Uncovering Unknown Issues of the Heart”, which I posted several months ago, “Janet, do you still have this struggle between needing to “feel” God and intellectually accepting truth about Him?”
It might help if you read the article first, but it’s certainly not necessary.
I think this is one of those seriously painful issues every Christian entertains when the bottom of their world drops out. And I am a painfully average Christian! My answer to Melanie’s question follows; although I’ve edited it, pluralized it, corrected misspelled words, etc., and as any true writer is prone to do, added to and reworded parts of it:
Yes, I still struggle with feeling God’s love for me as opposed to just believing He loves me. I am no longer desperate to feel His love – some of that is due to pharmaceutical help and some of it’s due to the inability to maintain that kind of emotional energy over an extended period of time. But, yes, I still struggle to feel God’s love. However, my perspective has changed a bit in the last few months.
Just as I love my husband and daughter, I realize that I don’t always feel a rush of love for them every time I see them. And as you no doubt have experienced yourself with your own families, sometimes how I do feel is less than loving. Life happens. Petty frustrations and unmet expectations result in less than loving feelings, but when their safety is threatened, or someone harms them emotionally, my response is clearly indicative of intense and passionate love for them.
There are times you tell your children “no” and they just can’t understand why. Somehow, this child that you labored over, nursed and nourished, clothed and nurtured, still doubts that you have their best interest at heart. Instead they think you don’t trust them or don’t want them to have fun. Their minds are so clouded by what they want that they can’t comprehend a reasonable and logical argument explaining the reasoning behind your response. In most instances, the conversation deteriorates from that point on as anger and attitude surface. I, then, find myself frustrated and sometimes resentful for being perceived as the bad guy. Parenting is hard.
As embarrassing as this is to admit, I think I respond the exact same way my children do when God says no or closes a door — not that His response to my reaction is frustration and resentment. But honestly, just like my children, I want what I want when I want it, how I want it, and I don’t want anyone telling me that what I want isn’t best for me.
Just the other day I asked myself exactly what I expect God to do to make me “feel” His love?
I can’t make my husband feel happy or sad or loved at will. I can try but some days, for whatever reason, the things that normally make him laugh or feel loved just don’t result in the usual emotional response. Emotions are a response to some stimuli. It’s pretty unreasonable of me to demand that God provide that stimuli on demand, but isn’t that what I’ve been trying to do? Even if He did, some days it just wouldn’t work. I’d be too distracted, afraid, or whatever for that stimuli to generate the hoped for response. C.S. Lewis said in A Grief Observed, “The time when there is nothing at all in your soul except a cry for help may be just that time when God can’t give it: you are like the drowning man who can’t be helped because he clutches and grabs. Perhaps your own reiterated cries deafen you to the voice you hoped to hear.” Could it be that in my desperation to “feel” God’s love, I can’t quiet myself enough to hear His still small voice?
I think I’m starting to understand that the only thing I can do is ask God to help me recognize and experience His love for me. I can ask God to help me not only accept His love, like a gift wrapped package, and to receive it by opening the gift, but also to open my heart so I value the gift as it was intended. And that last point is critical. Have you ever received a gift and been disappointed because it wasn’t what you hoped for or maybe you wondered, “What am I supposed to do with this?” In order to grasp God’s love and care I need to be able to comprehend and fully appreciate the value of the gift given. Sometimes it’s only in retrospect that we understand and appreciate a gift.
If I can’t learn to recognize God’s loving overtures or become increasingly confident His love for me regardless of how I feel, I can imagine only two possible ways God might satisfy my demand to make me feel His love. One, I can surrender myself to become a robot in His hand, which He never wanted, hence the gift/curse of free will, or two, I can require God to answer to me (which is absurd but bear with me a minute). This is how that idea might play out: Janet needs to feel love, therefore God needs to give Janet ‘xyz’ or ‘abc’ to stimulate the feeling of love she “needs” to feel. In this way, I, Janet, the creation am dictating to my creator, God, how to satisfy me. It’s not only presumptuous but you can fast forward to the logical conclusion that all God would succeed in doing is creating a spoiled, entitled and demanding child who felt no love for Him in return because a demand/fulfillment or demand/resentment cycle would have quickly been established. An entirely unsatisfying relationship, I dare say, based solely upon manipulation.
There’s a dynamic in a relationship with an unseen God that simply doesn’t exist in any other relationship I’ve ever been part of. That dynamic is, of course, the fact that I can’t see or touch God Almighty. My relationship with Him requires far more faith and trust than any earthly relationship I will ever have. To put that in perspective allow me to use a human relationship to make a point.
I’ve been married to my husband, David, for twenty-eight years. I see, touch and speak to him every day. I love my husband and I know he loves me. Even so, relationships ebb and flow. There are periods of time in which we are emotionally closer than others. In the twenty-eight years we’ve been married have I ever doubted my husbands love for me? Yes; more than once in fact. If I can see, touch and speak to this man every day and still manage to suffer through periods of time where I can’t feel his love for me, in spite of the fact that he is a good man with a servant’s heart, why should I be surprised that I can’t always feel God’s love for me? Why should I expect to feel God’s love for me all the time?
I guess I’m concluding that I need to humble myself and ask Him to help me experience the love I know, without a doubt, He has for me. I also need His help receiving His love because there is no earthly relationship that truly offers completely unconditional love and acceptance. I have experienced my parents and husband’s attempts to love me unconditionally, however, their example, will always fall short. We’re human, we all have expectations and unfortunately those expectations color our interaction with others either through spoken word or subtle body language, attitudes and actions. Only God offers unconditional love.
I need to realize that all my earthly experience with love has been flawed. I don’t have a pure worldly example of what true unconditional love looks like. So how can I possibly compare the way I perceive God’s love for me and decide if it measures up? Personal experience has taught me that at some point, in some way, love will let me down. Unfortunately, I think life has taught me to expect that God will let me down too, and sometimes my circumstances seem to scream that He has. It’s not true but people see what they expect to see, myself included. And perception and reality are often two very different things. The problem is that we can’t always recognize the difference.
Christians encounter so many different situations but regardless of the specific stressor many of the same emotional responses are generated and our response to those emotions is complicated by our faith and trying to lean on and trust God while simultaneously dealing with feelings of abandonment and betrayal or as if in the grand scheme of things His plans supersede our individual value to Him. It often feels as if we are but pawns in the pursuit of the lost, and that the wounds we suffer along the way are somehow acceptable, unintended consequences. I think we feel that way because that’s what we actually see played out before our eyes in the world around us – it’s how humans act, but not how God acts. I swear the hardest part of grieving is trying to reconcile my real world experience with God because He is holy and we have no visible representation of what holy really looks like when played out on the world’s stage.
This I do know because the Bible says it’s true, we are not expendable or deemed more or less valuable than any other Saint or sinner in God’s eyes. He does not operate on the philosophy that the ends justify the means. The Bible clearly states that God is love – everything about who He is and how He works is the living embodiment of love.
1 Corinthians 13 tells us exactly what that looks like. You can substitute “God” or a personal pronoun for love in those verses and it reads something like this: God is patient and kind. He is not proud, rude or self-serving. He is not easily angered. He does not delight in evil [as the wicked do]. God always protects, trusts, hopes, and perseveres. God never fails.
Since we only see glimpses of God’s innate character (displayed through lives being transformed (sanctified) by the Holy Spirit in fellow believers) and never see a fully sanctified believer we are tempted to believe that God behaves like humans do. It is a struggle to see Him filtered through the words on the pages of our Bibles. But even as Satan whispers his lies, your fear-filled heart is wrestling to cling to your faith in spite of, and also because of your circumstances, and you, like everyone else, become all too aware of your brokenness, exhaustion and most of all your absolute ineptitude. It’s frustrating, horrifying, discouraging and frightening and we all end up doubting and questioning because God made us insufficient in our own power. All those feeling are magnified by the knowledge that His ways are not our ways and that sometimes He allows the absolute unacceptable in our lives and we are terrified of that possibility — especially if we’ve experienced it in the past.
Ultimately, it’s clear that my desperate desire to feel God’s love on demand was in fact an unrealistic expectation. God’s plan is best. I don’t want to be a robot and He doesn’t want to control me. He wants me to choose to love Him just as He choose to love me. I want a mature love relationship with Him not the relationship of a temperamental toddler and an adult. In moments of desperation, I need to quiet myself, or in the event that I can’t manage that in my own efforts, allow God to quiet me, so that I can actually hear His voice speaking to me, reassuring me of not only His presence, but of His unfailing love as well. I also need to remind myself that just as my human emotions for others ebb and flow, my ability to feel God’s love will do the same. It’s not reasonable to expect to feel that heady kind of infatuation for or from God every moment of every day.
Furthermore, I must remember that because I have no plainly visible example of pure unconditional love, only God’s Word and the Holy Spirit can help me recognize and comprehend the reality of His unfailing love. God does not love me like anyone else loves me. He loves me better than anyone else has ever loved me and ever will love me. And yes, because I can’t see and touch God here on earth, I have to discipline myself to trust that what His word says is true, that He does love me with an everlasting love. Love is commitment and love is also an emotional response to stimuli. When I can’t feel that emotional response I have to have faith that God’s commitment to love me will not fail me.
Today I’m sharing another post from The Life I Didn’t Choose. It’s just too good not to share, and really, this blog site may have my name on it, but what I’m most interested in is the intersection of faith and real life. Heaven knows I don’t have life all figured out and I have so much respect and appreciation for fellow Christians who wrestle with their faith when they just don’t understand. They could turn their backs and walk away deeply wounded, but instead they choose to grapple with doubts and re-evaluate previously understood scripture trying to figure out if they got it wrong the first time around or if just maybe that scripture has a much fuller meaning than they realized in the past. Thank God Melanie is not afraid to question and wrestle with her faith!
I had never heard the final chapter of Horatio Spafford’s story. But you know what, I’m thankful, not for Spafford’s state of mind at his death, that saddens me, but to hear he struggled AFTER writing the triumphant hymn, “It is Well With My Soul”. If that sounds unkind, it’s not meant to be. Spafford’s struggle just makes me feel better about my own.
The truth is, I have personally found that in the immediate aftermath of my own tragedies, I am solid and strong in my faith. But down the road, down the road is another story all together. That’s why, not long after Bethany and Katie died, I posted on Facebook that I want to find Psalm 57:7a, “My heart is steadfast, O God, my heart is steadfast!”, to be true of me – because I was not confident that my heart would remain steadfast. As 2 Thessalonians 2:13b – 17 says, “. . . God has chosen you from the beginning for salvation through sanctification by the Spirit and faith in the truth. It was for this He called you through our gospel, that you may gain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. So then, brethren, stand firm and hold [fast] to the traditions which you were taught, whether by word of mouth or by letter from us. Now may our Lord Jesus Christ Himself and God our Father, who has loved us and given us eternal comfort and good hope by grace, comfort and strengthen your hearts in every good work and word.”
Living day to day with the fallout left behind, my faith can falter. Questions arise and I struggle to find answers, and sometimes, there are no satisfactory answers. Sometimes I have to find a way to make peace with a lack of answers or to make peace with the unacceptable consequences I am forced to with. There is just no easy way to get to that point. Intellectually, I understand God’s ways are not mine. In my heart, I believe God has a good plan. But in spite of those beliefs, I can’t seem to merge the beliefs of my heart and mind together. It’s like finding two puzzle pieces that fit together, knowing they fit together, but for whatever reason being unable to actually fit them neatly together.
My Dad likes to work puzzles. I like to work them on occasion myself. Sometimes when the manufacturer cuts the puzzle, the cut isn’t clean. When the box is first opened and the pieces spilled out you may find several pieces that are stuck together because the cut didn’t completely separate the pieces. So you tear them apart and start to work. But sometimes when you try to put the pieces together they don’t snap in place and lay flat. Instead they buckle up. Those puzzle pieces are a pretty good analogy for the way my heart and mind seem to work. In keeping with that analogy I believe that the Holy Spirit has to come along and sand off or smooth out those rough edges, so to speak, which allows the puzzle pieces (my heart and mind) to fit the way they are intended. I have settled in my heart that the Holy Spirit works to help me merge the beliefs of my heart and mind revealing a cohesive spiritual truth; the end of which results in spiritual maturity.
So while watching a fellow believer struggle, while struggling myself, is unpleasant (what an inadequate word!), I am resigned to the process. I don’t like it! I don’t like it at all! But I’m thankful for those who have wrestled and gained the prize, peace that passes all understanding.
And why is Melanie’s post relevant to Christians who have not lost a child? Let me use Melanie’s own words (with one slight modification) to explain: “Because the support (or lack of support) ALL BELIEVERS (substituted for bereaved parents) receive from their fellow Christians can make all the difference between losing sight of Jesus and finishing well, with our eyes fixed on the “Author and Perfector of our faith.” Read her post by clicking on “view original post” in red below; it’s much shorter than my introduction! 🙂
If you have been in a church that sings hymns, I’m pretty certain you’ve heard the backstory to the hymn, “It is Well With My Soul”.
Or at least the most popular version–Horatio Spafford lost four daughters in a tragic accident. Only his wife survived the sinking ship on its way to England. Once there, she sent a heart-rending telegram, “Saved alone” to Spafford who had not accompanied them on the voyage.
As the story goes, Spafford, upon crossing the Atlantic to meet his wife, passed over the spot of the sinking and the words to the famous hymn came to mind:
When peace, like a river, attendeth my way,
when sorrows like sea billows roll;
whatever my lot, thou hast taught me to say,
It is well, it is well with my soul.
Refrain:
It is well with my soul, it is well, it is well with…
Everything Melanie says resonates within me, but I love this post because, well, it resonates within me! She loves the Lord, she clings to Him as she wrestles with faith and doubt.
Take time to read this post, and scroll through her past posts as well. While the things she and I write about have often been birthed by loss, the issues she addresses cross over into so many other areas of life. She’s been a student of the Bible for a long time and just has so much to offer. Pull up a chair and soak up her hard earned wisdom!
(Click on “view original post” in red below to access the article.)
There are those who say faith means you never doubt. Those who live by the creed, “Don’t ask questions!”
But I say faith is exactly what you cling to in the margins of doubt–when you have exhausted all the possibilities that exist in the physical, you-can-touch-it world and yet you KNOW there is MORE.
Now faith is the assurance (title deed, confirmation) of things hoped for (divinely guaranteed), and the evidence of things not seen [the conviction of their reality—faith comprehends as fact what cannot be experienced by the physical senses].
Hebrews 11:1 AMP
Questions are how you mark the borders of what you know and find the edges of what you don’t.
This week I judged a high school debate. It took me back over a decade to the time and place my own children were competing in tournaments. As I watched the eager and earnest faces of these…
We’ve been indoctrinated with the message that we must be able to turn every negative into a positive. Our culture as a whole no longer helps people work through their grief, instead we demand that they set it aside, suppress it, or spin it into an uplifting message – all the better if they can tie it up with a Biblical bow. As a result, we leave hurting people enmeshed in an internal battle pitting their normal need to express and work through their pain and sorrow against societies demand to find the silver lining and move forward.
I didn’t lose a son and two daughters and begin picking up the pieces to move into a hopeful future. I live with the knowledge that I will always be picking up broken pieces and there is no way to repair the pieces that have been falling since MD entered our lives.
A fellow bereaved parent and blogger, Melanie, recently asked me if I still struggle with feeling God’s love. The question came in response to a post I published several months ago entitled, 
I think I’m starting to understand that the only thing I can do is ask God to help me recognize and experience His love for me. I can ask God to help me not only accept His love, like a gift wrapped package, and to receive it by opening the gift, but also to open my heart so I value the gift as it was intended. And that last point is critical. Have you ever received a gift and been disappointed because it wasn’t what you hoped for or maybe you wondered, “What am I supposed to do with this?” In order to grasp God’s love and care I need to be able to comprehend and fully appreciate the value of the gift given. Sometimes it’s only in retrospect that we understand and appreciate a gift.
I guess I’m concluding that I need to humble myself and ask Him to help me experience the love I know, without a doubt, He has for me. I also need His help receiving His love because there is no earthly relationship that truly offers completely unconditional love and acceptance. I have experienced my parents and husband’s attempts to love me unconditionally, however, their example, will always fall short. We’re human, we all have expectations and unfortunately those expectations color our interaction with others either through spoken word or subtle body language, attitudes and actions. Only God offers unconditional love.
1 Corinthians 13 tells us exactly what that looks like. You can substitute “God” or a personal pronoun for love in those verses and it reads something like this: God is patient and kind. He is not proud, rude or self-serving. He is not easily angered. He does not delight in evil [as the wicked do]. God always protects, trusts, hopes, and perseveres. God never fails. 
Furthermore, I must remember that because I have no plainly visible example of pure unconditional love, only God’s Word and the Holy Spirit can help me recognize and comprehend the reality of His unfailing love. God does not love me like anyone else loves me. He loves me better than anyone else has ever loved me and ever will love me. And yes, because I can’t see and touch God here on earth, I have to discipline myself to trust that what His word says is true, that He does love me with an everlasting love. Love is commitment and love is also an emotional response to stimuli. When I can’t feel that emotional response I have to have faith that God’s commitment to love me will not fail me.
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