Day after day I listen as people tell me of their pain. The stories cover the gamut of harm that comes from living in a fallen world. How do I understand? So many had cried out to you for help Lord. So many had been victimized and suffered cruel harm while they tried to live by your precious Word. Why did you let all this happen? Where were you Lord?
Suddenly, scenes begin to come to my mind. I recognized that the Lord was leading me to replay the most painful chapter of my life, one scene at a time. I see my precious 2 and a half-year-old daughter with tubes sticking out of her tiny body as she lay helplessly in a hospital bed. Another, she is wailing as I hold her down as she is subjected to a painful ordeal during cancer treatment. Another, I am holding her as they come to take her to surgery. Another, I am holding her head as she pukes for hours after receiving the poison chemotherapy. I watch scene after scene in my mind, even though I am not trying to remember them. I also realize that there are so many more that exist that aren’t included in my replay.
Why are you having me to relive at all this pain Lord? . . . . . . Then I get it. Every scene, every painful ordeal that my daughter endured in her fight with cancer involved me. I was in every scene. I actually was the one taking her to each and every horrid procedure. I recall my obsession with being with her for it all. I couldn’t make it painless, but I was determined that she would at least have her mother with her through it all. Now I realize that I was associated with all the pain; the one taking her to have it all done to her.
“Why did she trust you”, I sensed the Lord ask. Without even thinking, I responded, “She knew I loved her, there must be a reason why I was doing it.” At two and three years old, there was no way I could explain to her about tumors, chemotherapy, blood tests, surgeries, radiation and such. Yet, she loved and trusted her momma.
“I get it Lord”! She didn’t have to understand or know why I was subjecting her to such pain. She just knew that I loved her, that I would always be with her, and that there must be a reason for it all.
My personal lesson from the Lord went on to include reviewing one of the most powerful verses in the Bible in the war with my mind. As my mind struggles to still see God as real and loving in the mist of all this unexplained pain, I read I Corinthians 13: 12, "For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known." (NKJV)
Again, the Lord helped me with one of the greatest struggles in life: How to believe and trust God with so many unanswered questions. It’s not a coincident that this verse is in the famous love chapter. Maybe God knew that we would be prone to doubt His love whenever we were faced with pain we didn’t understand. The passage also included verses describing how whenever a child, I thought as a child, but whenever a man, I put away childish things. As a child, my daughter thought as a child and wasn’t able to think and understand as an adult. As an adult, she has emphasized her amazement and appreciation for what I went through in trying to help and be there for her in her fight to live through cancer. Now, she understands, she knows fully. As a child, she went on faith—faith that her mom loved her even though she didn’t understand why she had to be subjected to such painful events.
I’m like that two year old who doesn’t understand many things here in my world. I wonder if God hurts knowing that He can’t explain in such a way that this two year old could understand. Thanks Father for helping me keep knowing you love me, you will be there for me, and that someday I will understand it all----but not now.
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