Sometimes, I pretend not to understand this world. Sometimes, it feels good to just let myself feel the injustice of pain....and forget the rest.
We just got news of another sister who died young...the sister of a guy who was a youth leader with us in Durango, another lifetime ago. Bad car accident. The day we left Durango, my inlaws heard about a woman they know there who had gotten the news about a different car accident, that one in Wyoming...their daughter was gone. So was her boyfriend. Acquaintances from Durango, now relocated to Montana, lost their daughter at 30 weeks in utero...she had a heart condition; if she'd lived to 34 weeks they could have done surgery. But 30 weeks....she was too tiny. So she flew away, too....that was the day before Celine died.
Sometimes, I don't want to look any deeper than that; to try to understand it. Except, I already do understand it.
I get frustrated with the way our world is right now. The pain, the sorrow, the cancer that takes young moms or dads away "too soon" in our eyes; the friends struggling to make ends meet; the teenage girl with internal pains no one seems to be able to solve. Those friends struggling with unfaithfulness in their marriage; the other ones who want a baby so very badly; the one struggling with depression. The school shootings, the bombings, the innocents abandoned and hurt...and there's so much hurt, so much grief, so much Ache.
And then we get home and our baby, after a week of sleeping well, starts waking up 3 and 4 times at night and I'm so very weary from everything in the past few months, and I don't think I can do it.....and I get frustrated with his little one year old self (lame) and yell at God in my head that I JUST NEED A BREAK and for the kid to SLEEP and I know, I know that's the selfishly wrong response...that if that family in Montana just had their little girl here with them, they wouldn't care if she ever slept through the night....
Sin sucks. My selfishness is sin. Free will, free choice is a beautiful thing... But sin sucks. It's what made this world what it is, right now.
Please hear me...I am NOT saying these things happened because of something sinful these people
did. (Well, except for the unfaithfulness. That's obvious.) I am NOT trying to preach. I'm
telling you what I'm learning in the depths of my soul...things I need to write down so I don't forget;
so that someday, maybe, our kids will have some insight into this time. I AM saying that the reason these things hurt so much...the reason we cry out "Why, God??" and feel this Ache, this sense
of injustice is because...this wasn't the original design. And whether or not you believe in God, I
know you still feel that, too. That something just isn't right here.
I know it because you were created by Him, too, and deep inside there was placed in you a longing for the things of God. For God Himself.
When God first created man it was to live in a perfect world...death wasn't part of it. Except He gave us the freedom to choose, because he wanted a relationship with us. Not a bunch of obediant puppets. And once they chose to sin (as we choose it, too. Ever lied?)...then death entered the picture. And things started fall apart...like bodies. And diseases came into the picture.
And pain. And grief. And babies who don't ever sleep through the night....
The beauty of all of this-everything spirling away from perfection and into chaos-is that, if we choose to see it, it shows us even more clearly that our God is all about restoration. About making the broken whole again.Thank goodness. This is part of what Adam talked about at Celine's service-how now, because of Christ's sacrifice, every death, every pain, every tearing of your heart can be redeemed. Turned into something beautiful, and whole, and restored.
The scars don't ever go away. The ache is still there, at times, because we still live here. But although we long for the day when the ache will be gone for good and we will dance in His presence, somehow...even here, somehow He is using my scars-their scars-your scars- to form an even more beautiful, glorious tommorrow. And right now, that truth is what we are leaning on.
"...weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning," Ps. 30:5 b
3 comments:
In church today a family was sitting in front of us. Suddenly they jumped up and carried their 9 year old boy out having a seizure. They never came back. In the midst of our singing I just put my head down and prayed for that family in their crisis, remembered Celine and all your family in that crisis that ended and death, cried and prayed. My thoughts were exactly as you have written. God did not want these things for us. His plan did not include our breaking relationship with him, going our own way. But he did find a way to redeem us so we will dance in Heaven but often cannot now.
Kristin more wonderful thoughts. Thanks for sharing your heart Jeanette
Kristin, thank you for sharing your heart. Thank you for your rawness in writing. I'm praying for you guys for a little peace in the storm. -Courtney-
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