So Many Things

On Friday, the Coach and I worshipped with friends as they celebrated the life of their son who passed away after suffering from a traumatic brain injury for four and a half years.  We had prayed for his healing here on earth - he's now fully restored and healed and in the presence of Jesus.  A young life worth celebrating - and a faithful God worth worshipping.

I can't imagine the heart ache of losing a child.  I've watched way too many people that I love walk that road.  The holidays are especially painful.  Not that you can rate the daily pain in any real way.  It's all horrible and unbearable.  

Others I love have experienced estrangement and relational separation from their child.  I can't imagine that pain, either.  We've watched God restore in some of those lives.  Others remain unresolved.  I understand more every day what a sweet friend said to me when our son was so sick.  "At least it's just physical."  At the time, that confused me.  Our pain was so raw.  But I know what she meant.  We had our relationship with him and we all had our relationships with the Lord.  Broken relationships can be some of the most painful things we experience in this life.

I don't understand so many things.  We have our boy.  I'm thankful every day.  When I watch him with his precious little family and that darling baby - I am fully aware of the fact that it's a gift.  An unexpected and undeserved gift from God.  He's here with us and we've had the joy of watching him grow, marry, become a father... I don't take it for granted.  It's an unspeakable gift.

That doesn't take away from the pain that so many others are experiencing without their children this Christmas.  I wake in the night and early in the morning - and I pray for them.  I don't understand.  But I trust that God meets them in their suffering. 

I will never say that there's a reason for it all.  The only reason I see is that this world is broken. Sin brought death into this world - and we see it all around us.  Accidents, cancer, illness... it's all an effect of sin being in this world.  We can't avoid death - even though we can sometimes postpone it for a later date.  Sin brought death and death is waiting for all of us.

Every single day - but especially in the Christmas season - I'm reminded both of the blessing of healthy kids and the suffering of the precious people I love who have children in heaven - that GOD BECAME MAN and dwelt among us.  

The suffering doesn't make sense to me.  So many things don't.  Never will.

But I have hope.  Jesus, the incarnation of God, came to our broken world and died on our behalf so that we can experience LIFE.  Eternal life, absolutely.  But also life here and now.  We can walk in the midst of heart ache and suffering and death - and still have hope.  That's such a miracle to me.

So many have asked us how we walked that road with our son - a dismal diagnosis and the treatment that followed for three and a half years.  So many hospital stays and ER visits and more pain and tears than I can count.  I don't really know, honestly. We believed that God was in control and we trusted Him, whatever the outcome.  Which I realize is so easy to say on THIS side of it all.  When we still have our boy with us.  So many don't.  I feel that every single day.

So many things I don't understand.  But a God who loves us.  He gave HIS son for all of us.  In some tiny human way?  I get that.  I get watching your child suffer.  I understand the hopelessness of it all.  But I'm so very thankful that I can see the ending.  The redemption.  The HOPE.  The life.

If you are suffering this Christmas season, I'm praying for you.  I don't understand so many things.  But GOD offers us His Son, His presence, His HOPE.  Take hold of that and don't let go.  

Merry Christmas.