A Most Precious Time

What just happened? It was just a short time ago that we were celebrating Daniel’s healing from the CLL. Why did it happen? Why would God be so intimately involved in Daniel’s healing and then not heal him from this?

The fog was so thick. My mind couldn’t comprehend the reality of what had just taken place. I felt pain, yet numbness and confusion. I felt that God had turned His back on us. There were so many questions. How would I ever be able to trust God again? How could I believe and hope for any of God’s promises if He breaks His promises for healing? If God’s word can’t be trusted for healing, it can’t be trusted for anything. I thought God loved us. I thought God loved Daniel!

These were my thoughts and my cries in those paralyzing moments following my son’s death. Friend, can you relate? Because you’re holding this book in your hands, I suspect you too have experienced grief. You probably have questions similar to mine and find yourself asking over and over again why God put your particular trial before you. Trusting in God, as you know, means letting go of all control, yet you can’t bear to think about what you’ll do if the trial’s outcome isn’t what you desire.

You’re continually thrust into a cycle of discouragement, searching for answers, prayer, peace for the moment, and then discouragement again. This trial threatens to shake your faith. Even simple comments made to provide guidance for you, like “There’s only so much that we can do” and “Prayer will only take you so far,” are now enough to send you down the path of trying to take control of the situation and ignoring God.

Doors of hope open and close continuously. You’ve been riding an emotional roller coaster as you try with all your might to hold on to every positive result and not allow the negative results to bring you down.

There are good days with bright eyes, smiles, light conversation, and even joking with the hospital staff. In some ways the hospital staff become family to you because of the care they’re providing to your loved one.

There are days that aren’t so good, when there is pain and discomfort or you receive news that isn’t good, yet you hold on to the threads of positive news intertwined in the data dump the doctors unload on you.

And then there are bad days—days when the reality of what’s in front of you cannot be ignored or compartmentalized. Some of those days are really dark; they bury you in sorrow and pain. Those are the days when you feel most alone and lost. You may be surrounded by loved ones, yet they can’t take away this dark reality causing such pain deep within you. Everyone around you can bring comfort and support to your body. They can hug you, kiss you, prop you up, rub your back—external stuff. But they can’t even access where the pain is. It’s buried so deep in your soul that no words or contact can ever get there.

It’s at these times when, even if you didn’t communicate with God regularly, you’re there now. Your heart tells you to call out to God. You want to trust that God wills what’s best for you and your loved ones. However, you have doubts. You doubt that God heals or if He does that He will actually intervene in your loved one’s life.

But even if you have the strongest of faith, when you’re hit with the reality that you need to prepare yourself to say goodbye to your loved one, nothing prepares you for the loss. You start off being confused and angry—angry at God for allowing this to happen. I needed answers from God. I needed to know why. Why did God put Daniel through so much pain and suffering? As a parent, I needed to know that Daniel was okay, that he was being cared for and loved. You may not have all of the same questions I had, but we all share the same fundamental question: how could a loving God bring so much pain and suffering into our lives?

How do we make sense of the death of someone so dear to us, with their entire life in front of them? How do we truly understand God’s promises for us and His will for us? Does God promise healing or doesn’t He? Does God ever abandon us? Why should we pray? Where are our loved ones? Are they being cared for and loved?

As I’ve gone through this journey, I have discovered that there are answers, for me and for you. The pain you feel does not need to remain. There is a way to move forward with your life in a way that honors the life of your loved one. That is what your loved one would want for you, and it is what God wants also. You see, our paradigms shape how we view death. While we look at death as loss, God views it as the next precious step in our life.

Our loss is still there. That will never change. That loss is very personal. A very, very important part of us has been taken away, so we will never be the same again. Yet God has given me the peace and understanding to know that my beloved Daniel is alive and well and in a better place than I could ever have imagined.

So this is not a story with a tragic ending, and neither is your story. Our stories are love stories. God is not absent in your time of most need. God is there. When our care for our loved one has reached its fullness, God steps in and carries that love forward. So come, join me as we discover what God has in store for our loved ones in this wonderful, precious time.