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Friday's Faith: Spiritual Train-Wreck
The Shattered Pieces of Our Lives
When our daughter’s fatal car crash happened, she and two other teens were killed while only the driver and his brother survived. We, her parents, were thrown into a crash of another kind.
Our crash was a Spiritual Train-Wreck.
Years of struggle, amidst prayer, faith, trust, believing, hoping, loving were hurled onto that rock-hard ground of the death-of-our-child along with her, strewn everywhere, tangled in the wreckage past recognition.
As the officials at the site of our child’s death could not ascertain the make and model of the 1999 four-door Tahoe our child had been a passenger in, so too we could no longer recognize the intactness of those foundations of our faith that had been splayed all over that wreck-site:
/////\/ / \/ /\\ // / /\ /////\/ / \/ /\\ // | \ \ /\ /////\/ / \/ /\\ // \ \ / /////\/ / \/ /\\ // \\/_____\
\\\\\////\\||//\\//||\\ /\/ /\ eVlo/ \ /////\/ / \/ /\\ // / /////\/ / \/ /\\ // /\ Strut \ /////\/ / \/ /\\
// \ / / / \ / \/ \ / / /////\/ / \/ /\\ // \/\\ /\ /////\/ / \/ /\\ // \/\\/\ __// \ /////\/ / \/ /\\ // \ // | /////\/ / \/
/ \ Flibee \/ \/\ \ \ / \ / \ / \ \ /\/ Rearpy\ \/\\\\||\\\\\////\\||//\\//||\\
We had to find them, sort through to even recognize, pick them up, put back together, and then attempt to use these very pieces of our foundation when we most needed them to be intact, established, and usable to work through the worst, and I mean worst, trauma of our lives. What a cruel joke, to have the strongest pieces of your foundation wrecked at the very time you most need them in order to survive the worst nightmare a parent could ever have!
To be able to find them, of course we needed the help of the Originator of them…the God of the Universe, the Lord of our Salvation, the Author and Finisher of our Faith. Yet this was at the very time our understanding of Him and His ways was shaken up, questioned, and confused as well!
Was He looking in a different direction when the Enemy sneaked up on our child to overtake her?
Worse, was this His plan for her life?
Did He think she deserved destruction?
Was He angry with her too?
Else, why would He look the other way when we most needed Him to intervene?
Why didn’t He throw a pillow under her to protect her as we, her parents would have done?
I cry as I write this.
***
God’s ways are much higher than our ways, His thoughts beyond comprehension, thus the need for faith, trust, and belief…
Isaiah 55:8-9 NIV
“For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways,” declares the Lord. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts.”
His ways are wise, loving, and kind, yet they
do not always align with our exact agenda…
His ways align with HIS PURPOSES that go far beyond what we could ever think, dream, or imagine and are much bigger than our self-constricted view of reality at the time of the event. But at the moment of such life-shattering trauma, our focus is naturally constricted to the here-and-now of the hell we are living in, fraught with all the human foibles of self-preservation at-any-cost.
Stay tuned to our blog for more steps through this perilous journey of faith.
1 comment:
I totally understand your words and your pain. We lost our daughter in an automobile accident in January of 2008. It is indeed a parent's worst nightmare.
Incredible to me was how strongly I felt God's presence after her death...days when I could not walk for stumbling. On those days, as you said, He gave himself to me...more than words of comfort. I could see him walking the rocky road at my side, his arm wrapped around my shoulder in a supporting way to help hold me on my feet. He was leaned in toward me consoling me, although I don't know what his words were. All I know was the incredible love and his own grief and pain FOR me. Had it not been for this gift of himself to me at such a dark time, I don't think I would have survived.
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