Suffering

Suffering has a whole new meaning to me now.  I am still grappling with this concept and the all the whys that come with it.  Why me?  Why Norah?  Why my family?  Why did I get this cyst?  Why am I still alive?  Why did God not answer our prayers to protect our baby?  These are all questions that I cannot answer.  No one can answer them for me. There are so many layers to my story, and I am afraid time is the only thing that will help me peel them away, one by one.


A few of my friends invited me to join their weekly Bible study.  I had already been a part of a large weekly Bible study before all this happened, and I just didn't feel like I could go back for many reasons.  This smaller setting appealed to me and it is with people I know really well and feel comfortable crying around and just being myself.  They encouraged me and let me know that they were studying the book of Job.  It was almost like God was flashing a giant sign telling me, "you need to read Job's story!".

We are only through a couple of weeks of it, but Job's story has spoken to me.  I have been handed lots of books in the last couple of months...books about grief, losing a child, heaven, suffering, mourning.  And while the ones I have read have been helpful, where can we learn more than from God's actual WORDS??  I find myself reading it like a novel that I can't put down.  And man, did Job suffer!  All of his children, servants, flocks, and wealth were gone.  He lost 10 children!  He had sores all over his body and was in physical pain.  And he did praise God--Job 1:21

"Naked I come from my mother's womb and naked I will depart.  The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away;  may the name of the Lord be praised."


But he also questioned and grieved and was sad!  He didn't warmly accept these horrible things...he cried out, he wanted answers, he mourned.

I love what our book (You can find it here) says...
Job somehow understands that although God is permitting the terrible things that are happening, He does not take delight in them. "Job did not sin or charge God with wrong" (1:22).  Job's relationship with God during normal days had prepared him to honor God even during difficult trials.  We can trust God to renew His blessings and restore our lost peace and comfort sometime in the future.  While God may not restore exactly what we have lost, He can bring new sources of joy to us.


I don't know what my "new source of joy" will be, but I do have to trust that in time God will reveal that to me.  It doesn't mean that I am not sad or shouldn't cry or shouldn't want this to all go away.  I know that my daughter will never be mine on earth, but as Maggie so nonchalantly said to me last night after I told her I was sorry she wouldn't meet Norah, "It's alright, Mommy.  I'll see her when I get to heaven!"