The motivation behind this post has been on my heart for a long time, a good 2 years for sure though really a lot longer than that I'm thinking.
As you may know, I live, figuratively of course, in a world of online support for those who have suffered a loss, especially the loss of a baby. It's a hard world to be part of, its not natural and none of us really want to be there but its wonderful to have a community of people who understand. Frequently there are conversations about faith and there are, like everywhere in the world, those who believe and embrace, those who adamantly push faith away, and those who are stuck with so many questions so much anger, disappointment, frustration and sadness that they cannot wrap their head around God's place in their journey.
And I was definitely in that place for a lot of years. Even after I came to the Lord fully when the boys were around 2.5 , I still struggled with why God would allow this to happen to us. But in time, through research in the Bible, talking to those who study theology, reading things others have written and much prayer and contemplation, I have come to the conclusion that many mainstream faiths are really missing the boat when it comes to supporting those coping with the loss of a loved one.
There are so many things that are said that aren't helpful to those on a loss journey. Like God had a plan for your child or loved one, it was their time, or any other of the countless words that are given about heaven with the intent to comfort. But that's not really what I'm getting at today.
Although those words aren't usually helpful they tend to come from those in our circle of friends and family, within our churches and they are meant to assist us, to give us comfort. The problem is that they are based on an ideology of heaven, of God's plan for his kingdom people and the problem with that ideology is I'm quite sure that it's based on something that wasn't God's plan.
I'm going to slightly diverge here but it will help you understand where I'm coming from ....
So many people focus on God sending Jesus here for our salvation, to rescue us. But I don't know if that was entirely what God planned. What God wanted for us, his children, was to live in his kingdom. His kingdom was perfect, it had everything we needed, it was pain free and perfect, it was sin free.
We all know that changed with Adam and Eve. Their sin broke the perfectness of God's world. For the rest of time, until end times essentially, God's desire is to get us to bring that perfect Kingdom back to earth. But the problem is our world is so broken, so full of sin, so full of hurt that there are just too many things to stop that from happening. And while God is all powerful, until Jesus returns to earth, the brokenness, the pain, the suffering, the illness, the loss and the sin continue to exist. A line from one of my favourite movies, The Shack, really defines this....
"I can work together incredible good in the tragedies, but I don't orchestrate the tragedies." (A slight foreshadowing here to the study I'm hoping to write through)
Often when something tragic happens in our lives we blame God and in our devastation we cry, scream and wonder why it had to happen. I've been there but am realizing that God works amidst the trials we face, but he is not the cause of them. There is an enemy and he is out to destroy our trust, our relationship with Jesus, with trials and loss.
Some people in the loss communities talk about not being able to believe in a god who would take their child from them. Not being able to trust a Creator who took away a creation. Those that accept that it is a plan of sorts of God's, still can't trust him because they don't feel like he is supporting them, holding them up when they need him, helping them out of the darkness. There's a mindset of those who have had their faith tested to the point of them walking away that their faith, God, religion and everything they have ever been taught, failed them when it mattered most. They feel that if God isn't going to come through when their child's life is on the line or when their heart is in its most deepest, darkest pain, then what do they need him for?
I understand that because I lived in that spot to. I wondered where God was when we entered into our journey. I prayed to him to save both my boys, to heal them both and, as you know, that's not what happened. And while I wasn't furious with God, I wasn't sure I trusted him and I didn't pray anymore. I came around to a better place with my relationship with God but I still couldn't figure out why I was on this journey and why he didn't change things for me.
And in looking at those last few lines there is an overwhelming realization that I hope you can see. That is the word I/me. It was about me. Or rather it was about all the things God wasn't doing for me. But I couldn't seem to see that I had to do things for God too, I had to give it to God. I had to trust him and I had to lean in to him. I wanted it to happen immediately, I needed immediate relief from the brokenness in my heart and I couldn't understand why he wasn't fixing this broken heart of mine.
But that left it all up to God to do the work. That meant God had to do everything? That I could sit back and do nothing? No, it didn't for me and it doesn't for anyone struggling with loss. We can't live in that place, that place where someone fixes it for us. If we aren't willing to do the work, if we aren't willing to work through things, explore our feelings, our faith, the beliefs that don't sit right with us and if we won't seek out places where answers might be better that could well be outside of our comfort zone, outside of the faith that we have grown up with, then we're going to be stuck. And it's a problem, our problem. As my friend Mel says its not an iss-ue {ish-YOU), its an iss-me (ish-me).
Please people; people who are hurting, people who are struggling, people who are wondering and people who aren't sure, PLEASE don't think that God has abandoned you. Because he hasn't. He's there and he's waiting for you. He's waiting for you to walk with him through these hard times, he's waiting for you to take his hand and let him help you through it. There will be times where he carries you but there will be times where you have to walk and you have to trudge and you have to crawl just to get through the worst of it. There will be times that you lay on the ground kicking and screaming and not wanting to go forward because it hurts that much. But never, ever in those times has God abandoned you. He is completely okay with you being angry. He understands because what he wanted for us didn't happen the way he had it planned either. But he didn't give up on us so why do we give up on him?
Proverbs 3:5 ESV
Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding.
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