Understanding the Unexplainable

Your daddy and I have experienced some difficult situations at the church these past few weeks, both of them dealing with the deaths of family members of our church people. The first one was the hardest because we had to comfort a young couple who had just lost their first baby. The baby was born premature and despite the best efforts of the doctors, she didn't make it. It was so heartrending to sit with that young mother as she held her lifeless child in her arms. You would have been proud of your daddy -- he did such an amazing job of comforting the mom and dad and saying all the right things to let them know that grief was okay, denial was okay, and even getting angry at God was okay. He even held the little baby for awhile because the mother asked him to. I guess she wanted someone to treat her little child as a baby and not an object.

As I sat there quietly, I thought of you and prayed desperately for your health and safety. I know that woman made some bad choices during her pregnancy that may have contributed to the death of her child, and I hope I'm doing all the right things for you -- watching what I eat and drink, being careful as to the activities I do, trying (semi-successfully) to get more sleep... Emotionally, afterward when we were leaving the hospital, I was really torn up. Your daddy comforted me and took me to dinner where we tried as best we could to erase the painful image from our mind.

Pain and grief are inevitable parts of life. Sometimes we can understand and pinpoint the cause, whether it be our own bad choices or the choices of others. Sometimes pain is not so easily explained -- bad things do happen to good people, to people who love and serve the Lord with all their hearts, to people who don't deserve it. We cannot reason those things away with religious cliches or hollow explanations. Suffice it to say that God is omnipotent and we are not. He does not bring suffering upon us, but He sometimes does allow it to touch us. The reasons for unexplainable suffering will remain beyond our grasp until that day when we see Him face to face and all things become clear. Until we can see our role, and the role of our pain, in the greater scheme of things, we have to work through our grief to the place where we can trust again.

I love you, little one.