Where is God?

May 7, 2012

Today has been probably one of the hardest of my life.  I’ve gone through a lot of stuff in my life, including two days where I just couldn’t even get out of bed.  But none of that compares to seeing my daughter endure the worst pain of her life.  It breaks my heart and it is so frustrating to be so completely ineffective in helping her.  You know it’s bad when I am excited that I figured out how to make a giant icebag to wrap her legs.  It’s such a small thing but at least I was effective in helping her somehow.

So today I am drawn back to a passage that finally helped me answer a question that long burned in my head and heart about the sexual abuse.  “Where were you, God?”  In my bathroom, I painted Bible verses as a border.  I did the verses based on the theme “Emmanuel, God with Us” because that is something that I struggle with in my faith.  When I am at a low point, God always seems so far away.  So I chose verses that work with that theme to remind me of his never-ending presence.  There is one passage that, on the surface, doesn’t really match the theme.  When you really think about it more though, it fits perfectly.

It’s the passage that really helped me past a big hurdle in my faith.  It’s also one of the few verses that I can quote verbatim,

“Jesus wept.”

                      ~ John 11:35

It’s also the passage I talked to Kelsey about on one particularly tough night when she tearfully asked, “Why?”  In other words, why is this happening to me?  My answer was simply, “I don’t know.”  And then we talked about how the “why” questions just tend to be cancer to the soul and we need to try hard not to dwell on them.  So, instead we talked about “where is God in all of this?”

I told her the story of John 11 and the death and resurrection of Lazarus.  Jesus got word early on of Lazarus’s illness but he waited for two more days before making the journey to Judea.  He wanted to make sure that Lazarus was good and dead before he got there so there could be no other explanation for his resurrection.  All along, he went with the idea of raising Lazarus from the dead.  He knew what he was going to do.  When he was a short distance outside of Bethany, the sisters, Mary and Martha, heard of his arrival.

Martha went running out to meet him but she didn’t give him a warm and fuzzy greeting.  No, she said, “if you had been here, my brother would not have died.  But I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask.”  I think she was ticked off that he took so long to get there but she acknowledged God’s presence.  He told her then that he would resurrect Lazarus.  He knew exactly what he was going to do.  He basically was saying, “Don’t sweat it, I got this covered.”

Yet, when he saw Mary’s and the other Jews’s grief, he was “deeply moved in spirit and troubled.”  And then, “Jesus wept.”  But why?  Why would he be grieved when he knew that he would raise Lazarus from the dead?  I think it is because he feels our pain.  Plain and simple.  He feels it as deeply as we feel it ourselves.

Where was God when I was going through the things I went through?  He was right there beside me feeling my pain too.  Where is God when Kelsey is going through what she is going through?  Right there beside her feeling her pain too.

I see graces in this, though admittedly they are hard to see right now.  I see them in friends and family supporting us the way they do.  I see them in all the people, even people we don’t know, praying for Kelsey and for our family.  I see them in the X-ray tech that came out of the elevator tonight at 11:00 on his way home.  He was the tech who took x-rays of Kelsey yesterday.  Aron and I were standing in the main lobby of the hospital wondering how we are going to get change for my $10 bill because the parking garage only takes $1 bills.  Everything was closed.  When I saw him, he remembered me and saw the stress on my face and my tear-filled eyes and asked if he could help.  I told him my dilemma and he pulled out his wallet and gave me change for my $10.  He said, “That really ironic because I never have cash.”  I said, “That’s not ironic, that’s a God thing.”  He agreed.

I don’t know why Kelsey has to endure this now.  I choose not to dwell there because it just makes me mad and bitter.  I do know that God loves all of us and He knows and feels the pain we are all going through.  I pray that He will put His healing hand on her.