I have been hesitant to write anything because, at the risk of being a little ‘too’ honest, I am afraid of dishonoring God. I am beyond broken over what our family has had to endure, and although my faith is still very much intact, I have wrestled with heartache as I’ve struggled to understand Him better. I can’t put into words the kinds of things we’ve been through and felt in the past seven months, and I won’t even begin to try, but I am also burdened for all the other souls out there who have suffered as we have and then some. 

I know that God can handle our honesty, but I also know that He is a holy God deserving of honor and respect beyond what we can give. I hope to give a voice to the suffering, a cry of honesty for those who have felt shattered beyond repair, but please know that I am only human, and if anything I have said seems out of line, that is not my intent. I want others who have had emotions coursing through their veins like electric death to know that they are not alone in their thoughts and fears.

I have been through hell.

I have been through other griefs and losses that I thought would break me. Seasons of death and destruction. Mourning a future that would never come to pass. The anxiety of waiting for the next shoe to drop. But this has felt like a literal hell. 

The despair. The desperation. The cold grip of fear. The anguish of sobbing until you nearly vomit. 

I have come to believe even more than before that our sufferings in this life are completely individual, tailored in such a way that make it hard for the sufferer to hold on. This is why it does no good to judge others for the way they walk through their suffering – you can’t really know until you’ve been there. You can’t fully understand faith until it has been tested, and you can’t fathom hell until you’ve walked through it. You always have a choice – let it break you, or trust and hang on – but that doesn’t always look how others think it should.

Throughout this painful experience of waiting for my child to heal from brain surgery, I have wanted to die. I begged God to just take me if it wasn’t in His plan to restore her. She has been the joy in my days, and I remember thinking not long before all of this happened about how much I cherished my time with her and enjoyed watching her sweet personality blossom as she, my last precious child, matured. And then she was ripped from me, and I have walked through these days in agony, waiting for her to reappear. I am immensely grateful that she is still with us, still healing, and, thank God, still being restored, but I feel robbed of the last several months of her life – of our normal, contented life – and I am forever changed by the path we’ve had to endure.

“The love of God does not prevent us from suffering.”

I don’t remember when I wrote this in the margin of my Bible, but it struck me harder when I read it this time. There is no immunity in a world filled with countless pain and sorrow, and sometimes I wonder how many people truly get that. We talk in church circles about the refiner’s fire and bearing our afflictions, but how many people secretly think that ‘He works all things for good’ means it’s not going to be that bad?

I’m here to tell you, it is that bad.

Sometimes the thing that happens is the one thing that you thought, if you ever had to go through it, would kill you.

When all of this happened, I honestly believed my life was over. I could not watch what was happening to my precious child and foresee any future that held any happiness. Sometimes the fear does not arise from a lack of faith, but from the knowledge that whoever God is, I’m not Him. We serve a God who is incomprehensible in human terms, whose wisdom is infinitely beyond ours, and I had no idea what He was doing or where any of this would take us. Though I knew Him to be trustworthy, I felt broken by my inability to understand.

My thoughts and prayers were desperate, frantic. She doesn’t deserve this! Hasn’t our family suffered enough? Our life had been one blow after another, and another. When will this end?

Oh, God, we’ve been seeking you diligently. How can this be our reward?

‘Suffering well’ is not a call to plaster a smile on your face and pretend. The only power we have is trusting Him even when we don’t understand. If not for the years of preparation spent walking hand in hand with God, I don’t know how a person bears grief or loss or heartache.

Though I know that the only response is to move forward in hope and gratitude, I am still weary. I want to find joy again in this world where none of us are whole. I’m so over everything we have to deal with in this broken place. I’m so done with children hurting, with parents grieving. I’m sick of watching wickedness prevail. I’m tired of how sin rips at the fabric of divine goodness that has been woven into creation. I don’t want to suffer anymore.

His plans are good. I just don’t know how much it will hurt to experience them.

One of the ways I know He provides is through others. I’m so grateful for the people who faithfully checked in on us, shared their stories with honesty, and listened to the Holy Spirit’s leading in reaching out and loving us. I’m so glad my little girl is loved. If there is anything I want anyone to take from this, it’s that we need to be loved through our suffering. Pain is an ever-present part of this world, and I will never forget the ways that others stepped in to ease some of ours.

As I write this, so many people are going through the worst day of their lives. I think about the many others I’ve encountered who have been through their own hell, and all I know is we are to love the souls that God puts in our paths. Love people on their happy, normal days, and love them on their desperate days of doubting. It is never a wasted moment to live out faith in action in a way that sustains another.