Faithful Paradox

When Ezra was sick, the 7th floor of Children’s Hospital, the cancer floor, was full of children fighting that cursed disease. There were parents who wore the battle scars of life at the hospital; the wrinkled clothes and messy hair, the simple meals in the kitchen area, the always present 7th floor sticker-name-badge, the dried, cracked hands from continual washing. There was an unspoken camaraderie, a knowing and a grieving.

It was not uncommon to walk into the kitchen on that floor to find a mom crying, trying to get up the courage to step back into her child’s room. There were times I silently walked towards to these women, asked if I could give them a hug and prayed for them. Afterwards, they left with their tear stained faces, stepping back into battle.

You came to understand when there was a sign hung on the door that said, “do not clean” and yet it was full of people’s things that it was a child who was gravely ill, in the ICU. I’d walk past those rooms 20 times a day and pray for the children who were away from the 7th floor. A visit to another floor was never good news.

As we walked with Ezra through cancer, I had so many people say to me, “I don’t know how you’d do this without faith.” I’d usually smile and nod in agreement and yet it also left me often wondering, what would that journey have been like without faith? I wondered what the parents who sat with their dying children thought and felt when they had no hope, no God to cry out to? I wondered what was different about my journey than theirs – not just that I had God to cry out to and hope in life after death, but what tangible difference was there between our journeys?

If I’m honest, my desire and prayer throughout the entirety of Ezra’s illness was that God would pluck us up, out of the horrors of what Ezra was walking. I prayed for and expected miracles. I pleaded with God for healing. I believed God was going to heal Ezra here on earth. Surely, knowing the God of the universe would give me some advantage, some benefit that others did not experience, wouldn’t it? Surely knowing God meant that somehow he would pluck us up, out of the mire and muck of cancer and set our feet on solid ground and heal Ezra and we’d tell the stories of how God reached down and rescued us and healed my son. And God did none of that.

I longed for a miracle. I longed for healing. I longed for God to remove our suffering and restore the story of our lives. Yet those moments where God miraculously removes our suffering seem to be rare. As I have thought much about this, I see throughout the entirety of Scripture that it seems rare that God removes the trials of his people. Rather, he gives the promise over and over; “I will be with you.” He tells Abraham in Genesis 26, “I will be with you.” He tells Moses in Exodus 3, “I will be with you.” He tells Joshua in Joshua 1, “I will be with you.” The list could go on and on and in my pain and anguish, there were times I yelled at God, “I don’t want you to be with me! I just want you to rescue me! I want you to rescue my son! I want out of this!”

This brings me back to my previous question; what was different about our road of suffering than for those other families on the 7th floor who did not know Jesus? I cannot point to any one time and say, “There! That is where God was with me!” I cannot point to miracles or moments of clarity. I cannot name any specific instance in which I knew, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that God was with us. And yet his promise was that he was with us. Scripture says that God is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit (Psalm 34:18). It also says that his nearness is our good (Psalm 73:28). As I sat as a brokenhearted mom, I knew Scripture said God was near. And because he was near, that was for my good. But I confess his nearness did not look anything like I had hoped.My desire was problem removal. God’s answer was his nearness. And somehow, in ways I cannot comprehend, God’s nearness was better than the removal of cancer. I don’t understand that.

So what does the nearness of God look like in our trials and our suffering? For years I thought the nearness of God would mean that everything would be okay, or at the very least, feel okay. I had hoped that his nearness would mean some sort of tangible presence, some sort of relief from pain. I hoped that God’s nearness would act as a shield and protection around me; that it would stop the fiery arrows of the enemy from penetrating my heart. But that was not the nearness of God.

Could it be that God is near, even when we don’t see or understand it? Could it be that his nearness will not look anything like we had hoped? Maybe it’s that in our deepest valleys and most broken places, that is the place where Jesus meets us – not with relief, not with pulling us out of our pain and suffering, but by simply holding us close; holding our faith. Maybe the nearness of God looks like the daily endurance to do hard things and not give up. Maybe the nearness of God is the ability to stare death in the face, on the face of your precious son, and know with certainty that this life is not all there is. Maybe the nearness of God looks like faith that endures when really, there should be no reason to hold onto faith. Maybe the nearness of God is seen through the hundreds of prayers that were still uttered, even in the midst of disappointment and loss. Maybe the nearness of God was the courage to pray with and for doctors who did not know Jesus. Maybe the nearness of God was seen through the kindness Ezra extended to the nurses over and over. Maybe the nearness of God were the moments of laughter, even in the midst of so much sorrow and suffering. Maybe the nearness of God is seen through a thousand small decisions to keep moving, even when all we want to do is give up. I don’t know. Maybe the nearness of God will not look anything like we had hoped or thought, and yet some how, it’s there in a hundred tiny ways every day.

As I sit and wonder how our story played and felt different than those on floor 7 who had no faith, I have to believe that somehow, God’s nearness helped us – even if I’m not sure what that looked like. I have to believe that our story was different than others because we had the King of Kings in the room with us, even if most days we were unaware of his presence. There has to be hope in knowing that somehow, in the midst of such heartache, God is at work doing something in us and for his glory that we cannot yet see or understand.

There is much that I learned in that season of sorrow and there is much I am still learning as I try to figure out what life after loss looks like. I know this much for sure; it has required me to surrender the hopes and expectations of what I thought God was like and cling to the knowledge of who God says he is. He is kind, loving and good, despite the fact that none of what we walked through felt kind, loving or good. He was near and that was for our good, even though I cannot point to how I saw his nearness. He is faithful and he must remain faithful to who he is.

There are mysteries that I think we can know in our heads and yet still not understand and I think sometimes, God’s nearness is one of those. If I’m honest, I wish it was different. I wish there were tangible expressions of God’s nearness all the time in the midst of suffering. I still wish that God would have pulled us out of that time. I still wish that things had ended differently. But again, somehow, because God was near and with us, that was better. It’s a mystery I don’t understand and yet I choose to believe. Maybe that belief itself is the very evidence of God’s enduring nearness.