Lysa TerKeurst _{Leading Women in the Adventure of Faith}

Thank you for taking time to submit your questions yesterday.  As I read through them, Mary C’s question stirred my heart.  She asked:

I hope this question isn’t too serious, but I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately. I’ve heard quite often that we can go to Jesus with our pain and suffering. I’ve heard that we can do this because he knows exactly how we feel because he suffered all that pain on the cross. Here’s my question about this idea, Jesus chose his pain. Jesus had the option to choose. But I didn’t get to choose. I didn’t want my baby to die, so how can I turn to Jesus thinking he’ll understand when the situations are completely different? Jesus gave his life whereas my child’s life was taken. How can I turn to him based on him knowing how this feels when it’s not the same?

First sweet friend, let me say there are no easy answers to your honest question.  I have personally walked the deep valley of grief and I hated when people tried to comfort me with well meaning Christian cliche’s.  My questions were so raw that their answers felt more like slaps than healing salves.  So, today I’m not going to give you a well packaged answer but rather a few more thoughts with which I invite you to wrestle.

And I pray somehow through my simple tangled thoughts, Jesus’ most tender mercies wrap about you.  For sometimes, it’s not the answers that give us peace but rather the assurance that Jesus is really there with us.

This is from a blog I wrote last year…

It’s hard when we know God is big enough and mighty enough to save someone but doesn’t.

I’ll be honest this is something I have had to personally wrestle with and while I don’t have all the answers, I have a soothing thought I’d like to share. But first let me let you peek inside my personal story.

I know the cavernous grief that can sweep over a person in the midst of tragedy. My baby sister died due to a set of circumstances that all started when a doctor gave her some medication no child should ever be given.

One thing led to another and eventually her liver failed. While Haley was fortunate enough to receive a liver transplant, complications after the surgery were too much for her tiny body. I’ll never forget getting the call from my mom telling me Haley was gone.

I’ll also never forget the pink roses covering Haley’s casket and the way my mom laid across them and wouldn’t let them move Haley for hours after the service. It’s was too much to watch my mom’s heart being ripped from her chest and lowered away with that casket.

Caskets should never have to be made child sized.

So there I stood on the hot September day. I should have been at school eating lunch, laughing with my friends, planning my outfit for the dance Friday night.

Instead, I stared at the grass poking around my black shoes, wearing a black dress, listening the guttural cries of my mom. Fully realizing life as I’d always known it was over. A line had been drawn that would sever our normal description of time. Things would be categorized as ‘before Haley died’ or ‘after Haley died.’

I hated that.

And I hated feeling guilty when I caught myself laughing at something 2 months after she died. But the worst thing of all was reliving the grief every morning when sleep would give way and the realization that Haley was gone hit me just as fresh and raw as the first day I was told.

Wounds such as these take a long time to heal. And during that time we will feel anger, betrayal, sorrow, and 100 other emotions we wish we could whisk away by reading a few good books and praying just the right prayers.

But I found there is no secret potion for grief. No easy answers to suddenly make all things better. And no pat answers when our soul cries out, “How could a good God let bad things happen?”

That’s when we have to make the choice to stand on what we do know in the midst of so much we don’t know.

I finally understand this now. It took me years of running from God, feeling angry with God, and sometimes doubting God even existed. I was so consumed with my question of ‘why’ that I lost sight of the answer God had already given.

Jesus. God suffered as he willingly allowed his Son to be taken, and beaten, and killed so that the brokenness of this world would be temporary.

Can you imagine the restraint it must have taken for God to watch and not step in? As a parent, I can’t imagine.

The restraint was His deep love for you and me and my sister and my mother and every other sufferer of grief. I’m convinced on the day Jesus hung on that cross, God saw us. God saw my mother draped across Haley’s casket and with the deepest guttural sobs said, “I will make this right sweetheart. I will make this right.”

God is loving. God is kind. God is merciful. God designed this world without tragedy and grief and cancer and death and mothers having to bury their children. God didn’t want us to know this kind of grief. But he did want us to have the free choice to love. And in that free choice, we brought sin into this world and broke God’s original design.

In the end, it is His suffering that provides something greater than answers. Hope. Pure and unrestrained hope. Death was not the end for my Haley. It is but an interruption of time.

And with that, I turn my face to the sunshine and with full confidence whisper, “I’ll meet you where the pink roses grow wild and free Haley. And we’ll laugh the thousand laughs we missed out on before.”
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If you would like to read more on this there is a chapter in my new book, ‘Becoming More Than a Good Bible Study Girl’ called When God Hurts My Feelings.  You can order a copy for yourself or for a friend by clicking here.

Mary C.  I would love to send you a free copy of this book if you’ll send your address to Holly@Proverbs31.org.