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Tuesday's Trust
How do I trust, left quaking in my boots?
This week, a precious grieving mother reached out to me on the internet, baring her broken heart and soul to cry out for help to a fellow-grieving-mother. I dare-say she shares much of our own dilemma in needing to cry out to God when our understanding of Him has been thrown to an all-time low... Here I share her cry anonymously and my letter back to her that God put on my heart.
Angie,
I found you last week when I was looking up the word Grieving on the Internet. (Your) story was very touching and I hurt for you too.
I recently was 5 months pregnant and lost my baby boy. I never knew we as mothers could experience so much pain. I struggle with constantly asking God why, why why. I am a believer as well and it just tears me apart wondering why God would hurt us this way.
Anyways I know that I have some kind of strength and peace because of the people praying for me. I have really (distanced) myself from God, even though I talk to Him just not as much anymore. I want to just pull my hair out at times.
Could you please give me some encouraging words. I don't know how you pulled through.
Thank you
Dearest (Grieving Mother),
I am so glad you found me through the internet!
My heart breaks for you in losing your baby boy.
My heart breaks for you in hearing your agonizing struggle with God.
My heart breaks for you in recognition of that vulnerable spiritual struggle.
Yes, Grief can throw us into what my husband and I call a
"Spiritual Train-Wreck": right when we most need God, all our basic foundation in Him is shaken, if not shattered.
The One who knows us to the core and loves us without fail, the death of our child leaves us questioning, confused, even recoiling from. His very love for us has seemingly been contradicted and disavowed when we needed it most.
His reputation as
that Rock of protection,
that Beacon of diligent watching out for us and our little ones,
that Fighter of our Enemy,
seems impugned if not completely shattered.
All of our "Assumptive Beliefs" in Him are challenged if not shot-through,
leaving us confused as to who He is now,
leaving us feeling betrayed,
leaving us feeling abandoned,
on-our-own against an Enemy
we had no strength to fight,
not enough foresight to circumvent,
not enough armor to destroy before he could destroy our own.
And then, we are expected to bow to our knees to call on this God at a time we feel the most abandoned, let down, and/or betrayed by Him?
So, we unwittingly find ourselves distancing from Him, knowing we are probably being deceived by the Enemy, yet unable to overcome our confusion to again trustingly bare our hearts and souls before Him who gave up all for us.
What a conundrum! What a dilemma! Needing the One who loves us the most, yet fearful of and feeling betrayed by Him in the loss of our most sacred treasure on this earth, our child who has fallen right in front of His very eyes...
We have spent our lives watching out for our little ones, throwing pillows down every time they are about to fall, or picking them up quickly after they do fall. And then, when they need a pillow much bigger than the one we could lift, we discover their Heavenly Father did NOT throw it down in time for them to be saved? When He could see what we could not see coming at them, HE did not intervene, HE did not SAVE? It does not compute with our finite minds. It does not register in our hearts as a God of Love, of Protection, of Saving-from-the-Enemy.
So we become estranged, confused; we pull away. We have no strength to do battle with Him with our questions, our confusions, our feelings of being betrayed. So we retreat. We shut down. We back away. At our weakest, we are seemingly left alone to walk through the "Valley of the Shadow of Death" that the psalmist declared he could walk through without fear "because Thou art with me."
And to whom do we turn?
The civilians who have never tangled with this War of the Soul in the Valley of the Shadow of Death have NO CLUE with what we are struggling; indeed, we had no clue when we were on the other side.
But now, here we are, under the rock and rubble of devastation of all that is most dear to us, with no fight in ourselves, and with no understanding of our Lord-our-Risen-One who could rescue us from Evil, who could restore our hearts and souls, who could pick us up and hold us close to His heart when we most need Him as our Heavenly Daddy, our Abba-Father.
So we turn to the literature of other Sojourners of the Valley of the Shadow of Death, and we find very little there that truly addresses the spiritual disillusionment with which we struggle. It seems we find little more there than trite, superficial inquest of their Living Lord. It appears they are walking out of the Battle's Emergency Room settling for little more than mere superficial band-aids over their war-torn hearts that needed massive critical-care intervention to sustain Life.
So we turn away from pat answers of civilians and superficial answers of victims who have gone before us.
Yet we are left among the rubbles with no skin on, needing help but afraid to ask for it.
We find ourselves quaking before our Lord, much in need of His healing but afraid to bare our wounds to Him for treatment with His soothing ointment that could penetrate to the deepest core of our being with His healing Love because we don't "know" Him like we thought we did.
We not only feel blasted to smithereens by the Enemy, but when we look behind us to our Savior, we cannot find Him, and it feels as if some of the fiery blast was allowed to pass through Him straight to us, or even worse to our own vulnerable child.
Indeed some of us fear the fiery blast of death may have been of HIS own orchestration if we are to believe what is spoken to us: "God wanted your child to be His beautiful angel in Heaven."
So we recoil from Him, from His otherwise saving presence.
We are left in a sinking, war-torn ship without a Captain,
in a losing battle without a General,
in a Death-devastated Home with no Daddy to fight for us, to save us.
Disillusioned, beaten down, weak and powerless, we find ourselves like the disillusioned disciples who cry out,
"Whom have we in Heaven but Thee? And where else do we go? You alone hold out the words of Life."
My heart and prayers are with you, dear sister in grief.
Much love to you as you seek to find your way through the shattered remains of Death's battlefield,
Angie
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