Oh... Timehop sometimes you kill me.
This is my #tbt....
5 years ago on this day I was sent to the ER with the little Princess who was just 4 weeks old. I'll never forget pushing my double stroller out of the doctors office with her screaming... Ethan, 3 years old, was refusing to walk with me and Jace, 16 months old, was trying to flail himself out of the stroller.
I'm a pretty tough girl.
But I stood there in the hallway. Stopped walking and started weeping.
A nurse rushed to my aid and walked me to my car. I fumbled to call my husband telling him to meet me at the ER...
I pulled into the Hospital in a daze. I remember looking at Brent and us realizing we couldn't bring the 3 year old and 16 month old in there with a 4 week old sick baby.... In addition we lived far from family... The only one family member near us couldn't help right then...
And so my husband squeezed me~ as if to say... "You can do this." kissed me on the head, prayed, loaded the boys in his car and drove away.
And I walked into the ER by myself grasping my surprise baby who I still couldn't believe was a girl crying out to God against the thought that she might have spinal meningitis.
They tested for hours, admitted us and tested for a few more days...
Then the infection started to clear and indicted she had viral meningitis not the deadly opposite.
And so we went home.
So thankful that she was ok.
But.
I did not go home in ignorance.
It was 5 days before my sisters birthday that Ava was admitted. She would have been 25 that year. Hope (my sister) life was snuffed out by Cancer she had contacted at the age of 4 and fought for 6 years until it took her life.
I know many stories of precious people pleading with God for the suffering that comes their way... and it doesn't go the way they prayed... It doesn't go the way that is just and merciful.
Our views of God are shaped by this suffering. By whether we are rescued or everything falls.
I've experienced what I would call "victories" from challenges in my life but in the same hand I've felt and graffled with much pain and I've seen this in the life of so many others.
"My only fear in life is that I would live life worthy of the sufferings that have come my way." - Viktor E Frankl (Holocaust surviver)
We live in a fallen, broken world where sometimes the realities of sin smack us in the face and we are not rescued. Those of us who have believed in the goodness of God get faced with incredible pain.
The question is can we live life worthy of the sufferings that come our way? They don't come for any reason many times ... They just are.
They don't go away for any reason by Gods hand... He didn't will it that way. It's just broken and fallen.
Can we be worthy to believe the goodness of God despite the suffering?
Can we respond to the suffering that is so apparent around us (no matter what's happened to us) with the goodness of God?
He is love, joy, peace, long suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.
I know so many who have displayed this in their lives. People who have had immense pain, sacred things torn away and yet, they still display the goodness of God everywhere around them.
You inspire me. You are the true essence of Hope that comes from suffering. You show me that we are our response. No one else. You live life worthy of the suffering you've faced. I honor you today and pray that I will always display the same courage in my own life. Peace. xxoo
