Nothing makes me wrestle with my faith more than when bad things happen to good people.
I just can’t understand it. I cannot understand how a woman, my sweet and beautiful friend, can carry her baby to his due date and lose him at the very last second. I cannot understand how she goes home to a nursery without her baby.
It makes no sense. None of this makes any sense.
I know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, but I’m having a hard time seeing that right now because all I see is unbearable grief. I see the text message informing me of the unthinkable, and I see myself collapsing on the cement patio with tears spilling down my face.
But who else can I turn to if I can’t turn to God?
For even when everything crumbles and everything feels uncertain, I know at least this much to be true: there is hope in nothing else. There is peace in nothing else, comfort in nothing else. There is nothing in this world that can ease this much grief, this much sadness, this level of pain.
So I sit on the cement patio and I let the tears fall and I turn to the God whose plan I don’t understand because I have no other choice but to cling to the hope He offers. I let peace overwhelm me and I remind myself that this time on earth is just a blink of the eye in the span of eternity. This agony, this all-consuming sorrow, is temporary. It is not forever.
I remind myself that God took the most horrible act of all time—his perfect son being nailed to a cross—and He turned it into the most wonderful gift that has ever been offered in the history of the universe: grace for all who follow Him. If God can turn the death of His own son into salvation for all believers, surely He can make good of anything else.
But for now, in the midst of this immense anguish, my heart aches as I try to understand things that cannot be understood.
Today I drop to my knees and pray – Jesus, be near. Jesus, be near.
I love you Diana.