When We Don’t Understand Why

How many times have you gone through something hard, something that feels like your heart is getting ripped out of your chest and you don’t understand why? It leaves you feeling desperate and reaching for answers from wherever you can find them, and it leaves you questioning God. How could He allow this to happen to me, how could He let me go through this situation where it seems I’m worse off than I was before?

Just recently my husband and I were able to pray for a family who had lost a newborn child. It was a very difficult situation. On the onset when we were told that the family was asking for prayer due to what they had just endured, I immediately got nervous because I felt I had nothing to give them. I didn’t have the answers that their hearts were longing for. As I walked behind my husband toward this family after one of our church services, I prayed, “God I don’t know what to say, this is hard stuff.” We met them at the end of one of the aisles of the church and my husband began speaking to them. Immediately I felt the Lord tell me, “This mom needs to hear the words of your story with Faith”. Not faith, as in the faith to believe, but Faith, as in my daughter. You see almost 22 years ago I got pregnant with my third child, and I was so excited! Several months after my pregnancy began, I lost my baby girl, Faith. It was one of the hardest experiences of my life. I literally felt like my heart had been crushed into a million pieces. I quickly fell into a deep depression for about 3 months. I didn’t want to talk to anyone, I didn’t want to go out, I was sleeping all the time, I wasn’t eating, I wasn’t living. I was just surviving in my grief. I couldn’t understand why God had allowed this to happen to me. I was angry, I was bitter, I was in severe emotional agony. For those 3 months all I could focus on was the why. Sorrow filled me and overwhelmed my life during that very dark time, and I didn’t see an end to it.

Then one day my parents stopped by my house. I sat with them at my dining room table and my dad wanted to tell me of a testimony he had just heard that he felt I needed to hear. I was not in the mood to hear testimonies about anyone. But he, very sweetly and lovingly, asked me to listen to what he had to say. Everything inside me wanted to run back to my room and get under the covers, but I respect and love my parents way too much so I resisted and sat still as he began to tell me what he had heard. As he sat across the table from me that day, he told me of a television program he had been watching where a preacher had an experience with Jesus where he went to heaven. My dad kept explaining that the preacher said many things, but he wanted to share with me just one part of it. He said that the preacher was explaining that during his experience in heaven he came to a huge white room that almost looked like an enormous warehouse. He said that this space was filled with babies. The preacher continued his testimony by saying that he asked Jesus why all those babies were there, and that Jesus gave him a response. Jesus answered him by explaining that those babies were waiting for their mothers, and that some mothers had lost them voluntarily while others had lost them involuntarily. He said that Jesus further explained that once their mothers arrived in heaven, they would be given back to them. As soon as my dad uttered these words I began to sob and immediately I was free from the agony I had been enduring. Immediately I received the peace of God that I would hold my daughter one day and that she was not gone forever. Only God could have restored me that day. God used that preacher’s testimony to bring emotional healing into my life.

As soon as I began to tell this hurting mom about Faith and about how God healed me, and how her baby is waiting for her, I received my answer as to the why. I didn’t get my answer when I received healing that day at my dining room table. I got my answer not even a week ago. If I hadn’t gone through what I went through with Faith, I wouldn’t have had words to give to this mom’s broken heart. My testimony became His message for her. What I didn’t understand almost 22 years ago, I understand now.

If you either involuntarily or voluntarily lost a child, I am here to tell you that all hope is not gone. Your baby is waiting for you in heaven. Your assurance of this is living in a relationship with Jesus Christ. He is our only hope, He is our healing, He is our strength, He is our peace!

Sometimes we will go through hard seasons in our lives. Seasons where we don’t have the

answers we want. Seasons where we feel that God is silent. These seasons are ones we rather not go through, but it is through these seasons that we have the opportunity to get closer to God and allow Him to strengthen us and make our relationship with Him stronger. If you are going through the “why” season I encourage you not to give up. I motivate you to seek Him more than ever before because truly, He is our only hope! When the hard seasons come, choose Him and not your feelings or emotions. Choose to press into Him because you may not understand the why now, but you will in His perfect time.

I am thankful today for Faith even more than before. If it wasn’t because of her, I wouldn’t have a story of hope in the midst of loss to share.

Believing, hoping, and trusting in God with every fiber in your being is not always easy, but it is absolutely worth it. It takes a fearless woman to lean on God when the why is unknown. Each of us go through different situations, each of us experience different difficult times, but you need to know that you have a message within you. God wants to use your story to help other women that are going through what you are experiencing or have experienced. So, be fearless and trust in the One who gives you hope.

With Love,

Mimi