God Gets It.

I struggle with the idea of suffering. I struggle with watching others suffer. I struggle with the truth that God is in it and all around it and in control. I struggle with the reality that life can be beautiful and painful and just as it should be all at once.

I have a tendency to want to fix things. I see pain around me and I want to do everything I can to take that from others so that they wont suffer. I think I get that from my dad. I remember that when I was a little girl I used to have vividly horrific dreams. I would wake up screaming and my dad would come running in, sit by my bedside and put both his hands over my forehead. He would wince dramatically like it was taking all his energy to remove my bad dreams and then he would put them in his own forehead. After he left I would sleep soundly, certain that my daddy was holding all my bad dreams now and that he would never let them come after me again.

Now here I am, a 24 year old woman, desperately wanting to take all the bad things from others and not being able to. I have had to come to terms with the fact that I cannot save anyone. I have no power to do so and no right to.

God and I have had some intense conversations recently. I watch my sweet Joanna suffer deeply and I challenge His good and perfect plan. It makes no sense to me. I guess those are the key words: to me. It is beyond my capacity to understand how my God could allow so much to come upon anyone.

When I watch her day in and day out, pushing through trial after trial, trusting in our Savior through scans, and appointments, and so much medication, and fatigue beyond what I can imagine, I challenge Him. I can picture how he sees me: sweatpants, messy bun, standing in my living room screaming up at Him to make it better. I can only assume that He smiles at my childishness, brushes my hair out of my eyes, sits down beside me. “You must trust me”, He would say, “My plan for Joanna’s life is bigger than you can imagine. Be still my sweet one, for I am holding her every so tightly.”

As I write this I am crying over my computer keys. My God is in control. If that is how He tenderly speaks to me about my friend I cannot even imagine how He is with her. How He wipes away her tears, and carries her through all her appointments, and rocks her to sleep at night, and soothes the hearts of the family she so strongly cares for.

I know that He expects our resistance. He understands our feelings. He was human after all. It gives me great peace to know that this God we serve “gets it” and walks with us through all of our kicking and screaming, our angry words, our messy tears, our “I give up” moments. Oh he most definitely “gets it”.

And so we may never understand His plan, or the paths that take us there. But we can trust in His goodness because at times that is all we have.

Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus. -Philippians 4:7-