Yesterday was filled with emotion. Everyone I talked to had bad news to share and I found myself offering what few words I could muster for encouragement. My words seemed empty and cliche', but there are just some situations where there are no words. What do you tell someone whose husband is sent home to die because the cancer is back and in his lungs? What do you say to someone whose young, healthy, and beautiful daughter has just been diagnosed with breast cancer? What do you say to the widow who is dealing with the 1 year anniversary of her husband's death as she sits alone in her house? What words of hope do you offer the lady who has watched her husband suffer from dementia the last 8 years and is by his side as he drifts in and out of consciousness, his body shutting down.
What do you say?
All of these situations are real. I spoke with all of these people yesterday and to say the least, I was emotionally spent.
Life is not fair. IT IS NOT FAIR! But whatever made us think that life was supposed to be fair? We think it should be fair and that everyone should play nice and that the good guys should always win and the bad guys should get it in the end. But, they don't. Sometimes the bad guys are victorious and disease, tragedy, heartache, disillusionment, fear, and confusion win.
The other day, I read a blog of someone who had prayed for a child for MANY years and was finally blessed with a baby only to lose that child a few days after he was born to a random illness. This person is now an atheist. When I read that sentence, my heart just sank to the floor.
What a tragedy. I can't imagine losing a child, especially since I have one of my own.
I don't have the answers for those unanswerable questions. I only have the Word of God to lean on. I lean on His Word not just in times of despair, but in all circumstances because it offers hope and comfort.
"In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith--of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire--may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory, and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed."
1 Peter 1:6-7
It doesn't matter who you are, but at some point in your life, it will feel like it is spinning out of control. You try to grab the wheel asking, "Why God why?" and we don't get a response. We can decide to center our focus on God and what his next step is for us, or we can become bitter and focus on "Why did He let this happen to me? Doesn't He love me?"
God's love for us is infinite and indescribable. Just because we are suffering doesn't mean His love for us is less. He holds His children through tragedy and trials. God loves us more than we could ever comprehend in our feeble brains, and because He loves us, He knows the people and things that are precious to us. There is not one thing we have endured that HE did not endure on the cross.
Do you remember old Job? He lost EVERYTHING and in spite of it all, grew closer to God. Job was blessed because of his faithfulness...a larger family and more wealth than he'd had before.
I pray that I can find the lessons that God is trying to teach me as I encounter tragedy and trials in my life. I want to grow in Him. I want to be BETTER and not BITTER.
I pray that my friends mentioned above will lay their head in the lap of Christ and let Him hold them as they walk through this valley.
Because if there is a valley, there is a mountain.
And there WILL BE shouting on the other side.
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