“Where was God when I needed Him most?”
“How could God let my child die?”
“Why did God let this happen to me?”
“Why didn’t God answer my prayers?”
We’ve heard many of these types of questions and have asked some ourselves.
When pain invades our lives, it can be easy to be angry with God or doubt His existence altogether. It can be hard to trust God when we ask for one result and the opposite happens.
When our son died, it felt like God let us down, big time. We could have thrown away our faith in God as a result. However, our history with God ran too deep to do so. We had to stand on the truth that a change in our circumstances doesn’t change who God has proven Himself to be over time.
Faith is a choice. So we made the conscious decision to believe that, despite our heartbreak, God is still good, faithful, and kind.
We shared our questions, doubts, hurts, and frustrations with God: Why didn’t we get to keep our precious child? Why did God hurt us so deeply?
While we may never get answers to some of our questions, we still felt God’s love and comfort in various ways. We connected with God through Bible reading, prayer, journaling, music, nature, and other people. For example, we experienced His intentional care for us through the empathy of a bed and breakfast owner, the connection with a hotel employee, and the hospitality of strangers on the other side of the world.
We saw God’s good design through the beauty of His creation. We experienced His comfort through songs. His faithfulness throughout the Bible. His encouragement through talks on grief by Dr. Tony Evans and family.
God infused us with hope that we could press on through life after the death of our child. As we carried the pain, God would carry us. He would sustain us step by step, day by day. And He would restore our peace and joy.