(This post was written for my friend, Amy Bayliss. Her three young boys recently lost their father to a sudden heart attack. Please pray for them. Also please pray for the family of young Rebekah. She is battling cancer while her mother is dying from ALS)
I see a young child so damaged by the effects of radiation that she’s barely recognizable, while the words “inoperable cancer” pierce our ears. I see children starving in a world where we eat and drink without thought. I see young girls working on the streets, sold for the price of drugs, while adults abuse them in ways that one can only imagine. And I see three young boys crying out from the depths of a broken heart because their father has passed on too soon.
In this world where sin, death, poverty, perversion and pain are a vivid reality, we are tossed to and fro by the winds of “Why?”
Why did I have to lose five babies to miscarriage? Why is my dad living with fifteen inoperable brain tumors? And why are children hurting in this world? I grieve without understanding, and so how, as a mother, can I possibly teach my children to understand?
The winds of “why” are strong. They have the potential to pull one into the deepest pit of depression and another into the abyss of despair. What we believe about God and what we teach during these moments of pain and confusion determine how we set our sail in the storm.
High winds will definitely change our course in life, but the choices we make during these times of darkness are the pivotal points that determine where we will finally dock.
As parents we have a responsibility to guide children through times of trouble and to catch them when they fall. They don’t understand how to grieve anymore than we do, and so they look to us for those cues that will lead them through pain toward peace.
How can we explain pain to our children when we don’t have the answers ourselves? We start by honestly saying, “I really don’t know.” Man doesn’t have to understand the ways and the “whys” of God. His wisdom exceeds ours, and while we wish we had the answer to the question "why?" We don’t.
What we do know and what we can offer our children is hope. Time does heal our pain, yes, but God holds the power to start that healing today. Doubt has the ability to drag us into a pit, but faith has the power to lift us out of that pit and keep us from falling back in.
We don’t weather these storms alone, anymore than the disciples did when Jesus was sleeping on the boat through the storm. Upon waking him, they quickly learned that our God is ever present and always in control.
God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging. ~ Psalm 46:1-3, NIV
You are loved by an almighty God,
Darlene
For comments or questions, contact me at:
darlene[at]darleneschacht.net
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