“I feel like God hates me.”

It was difficult to hear those tearful words from my daughter as she wrestled with the weight of everything that has happened to her this past year. I’m grateful that she has finally healed enough to begin emotionally processing, but there is so much about the past several months that she doesn’t remember (and probably wouldn’t want to) and so much that will never be the same again. Not only can I understand how she would feel that way, but the same thought has entered my mind—sometimes I feel like He hates me too.

Of course, she and I both know that it isn’t true. It’s just that knowing that God is love isn’t always the soothing balm that it should be as we look around at all the world’s evils and sufferings. Where are you? we often think. Have you abandoned me?

As I look back on her sweet life, I can know with certainty that she didn’t ‘deserve’ any of this. She is kind in a way that this world needs desperately. It’s easy to ask, why her?

What I keep coming back to is this—nothing that happens here on Earth is without purpose. What she has endured is not pointless. From the choices we make—and how God uses them—to the circumstances that are entirely outside of our control, we are not left alone to face the harsh realities of this world.

No matter how we may feel sometimes.

As a mother, I have struggled with all of this, to say the least, because this is not the plan I would have wanted for her life. And yet, when we first learned about her tumor, I had an overwhelming sense that this was part of a bigger calling in her life. We are God’s handiwork, created with intention, for plans that are beyond our comprehension. I believed that then, and I believe it now. That doesn’t mean it will be easy, or that those answers always satisfy me.

When I think about the people who are worthy of admiration, those examples of courage and love whose impacts are greatest, their history is often filled with pain. Hurt can be a catalyst that propels us into the mightiest parts of our stories. Perhaps all of those people wondered at some point if it was worth hanging on. But they did, and it made all the difference.

I could write pages about how I’ve seen the hand of God throughout my story, and yet I still wrestle with grief and doubt. I need to be reminded that it’s not all for nothing. I’m just as human as anyone else, struggling to make sense of the horrors that take place in a world such as ours. But I also refuse to give up on the light in the darkness that we are called to be. 

So what I want to continue to fight for is the pursuit of something higher and greater than merely surviving this life. I want my children to have that victory. I want you to have that victory. What better way to live than to keep reminding each other that we have incredible purposes to fulfill? 

Oh, how I desperately and endlessly love my daughter, who has endured so much. So I cling to this—that love that we have within us has been poured out unsparingly into our souls. I don’t want to forget to allow it to fuel me, to fuel others.