God doesn't make mistakes

today i got up just before the sun to talk to God. there was a beautiful sky, the coming light. the changing from night to day. He is all about new beginnings in a real and deep way. i know that. and if i get up early enough, He reminds me. it's so worth it.

as i sat out on the porch, alone, watching the day begin, i truly felt nothing but joy. i had no great reason, just the moment itself. cool air. the fading darkness. the early light.

and i listened to that transition and i heard: "God doesn't make mistakes".  He doesn't make mistakes. i sat with that for a while to be sure i believed it, because that's huge. i mean it has ramifications.

it's opening a can of worms about suffering and why God allows it and is it His will or not and what kind of a God would... to which i say i don't fully know. but what i'm pretty sure about is that we are put on earth to find God. and when we find God and i mean really find God - like we want to sit and have a conversation with Him/Her, not like we decide to go to church, not like when we find religion - when we find God and begin to know and trust Him,  we find Joy.

but we don't have to. by all means it's our choice. we can try to make our own way and generate our own version of happiness. which people do all the time, successfully, but i think God has so much more for us. we can be really busy at doing many other things- like working hard and sacrificing things for that, like making money and enjoying that, like focusing on our relationships, like traveling and building things and making things and reading and writing things. good things. all the parts of our life can distract us from finding God, or they can be used to point us to God. the things in our life are not bad. but if the main purpose on earth is to find and know God, the paths that take us through suffering are part of that and they are often a more direct route.

i don't think God meant it like how we think of it. i don't think God wants us to suffer and come crawling to Him. i certainly don't think suffering is anything related to a punishment. sometimes we suffer because of the natural consequences of our choices, but often suffering is random, or because of someone else's choices.

God didn't fall asleep when Zoe was conceived. He knit her together in my womb and she is fearfully and wonderfully made- with her scoliosis and her sprengels shoulder and her autism- because God is so much bigger than our little made-to-last-80-years bodies. He made me with a straight back and even shoulders and a neuro-typical brain, and a great need for attention and affection and a tendency to be secretly selfish, and a great many other struggles. mine are just invisible.

so much of life is about avoiding suffering at all costs. i get that. do i wish for zoe that her world could be easier? that she didn't have a limp? that she understood facial expressions? yes. but i wouldn't change her because i am small and only see so far. because i'm often wrong. because i don't know in this great spinning world the potential importance of her challenges for her path to God, or mine, or anyone else's, maybe yours.

what about the most vile of crimes? does God allow those? yes. because people have choice and people hurt other people and we should do everything in our power to prevent and protect. can God heal the deep wounds from those crimes? yes. fully. with the tears that He cries while holding us in our pain. does God love the person who inflicted those wounds? yes. fully. as unfathomable as it seems He can't help Himself, as i would love my most broken child at their worst.

what about illness? why does God allow that? in a child? a young parent? i don't know why except that sometimes we don't make it to 80,  we all end. the great suffering that comes from that? i think it breaks God's heart too. but He doesn't avoid it, He joins us in it. and i have felt His tears and arms when i've walked though some of this suffering.

sometimes our best intentioned responses to potential suffering can move our paths away from His plan and make it harder to find God. when i was pregnant with jude and things looked very bleak, that he would be severely handicapped, many people mentioned abortion. it was their best intentioned response to help us avoid suffering. yet i would have missed encountering God in a powerful way- during the dark days that followed. i would have missed the opportunity to see miracle. my world would have gotten a bit smaller, a bit more controlled, a bit less about the mystery. and with out a jude.

when we open ourselves up to suffering we open ourselves to experiencing things beyond us. we gain a perspective that is only from the privilege of loss. when we die all our small deaths, of unmet expectations and dreams lost, we free ourselves to see a much bigger world. blinders come off and what kept us tethered or treading water in our understanding of what's important, changes.

from that place i can thank Him for all of life. from a place of trust and some personal experience, i can say thank you even for hard things, because i know God doesn't make mistakes.

being inside someone else's moment

last night was date night.  we were on a roof top patio eating spring rolls in a mostly expat crowd, when someone who appeared to be celebrating her birthday, got a phone call. a phone call that would change her world forever.  in slow motion, we watched this older woman unravel, and then her older daughter too.  there was "no! no!" and a lot of gasping and crying then questions,  "when did this happen?" and "are your sure?"  then more "no!" and falling to the ground or into restraining arms of husbands- as the daughter quickly caught on that her brother was dead.  that her mother had just lost her son in a car accident. 

it was awful. there was no where to go.  there was nothing to do.  it was like watching someones insides fall out- hearts breaking- years and words spinning- anger, denial, agony- on a beautiful evening that was meant for a celebration- a rooftop at sunset- it was out of context- it didn't belong there.


the patio stopped- froze.  time stood still, as we were stuck in someone else's life changing moment, witnessing something awful, something that didn't belong to us, but is such a universal part of life.

i have been at the bedside of many dying patients.  i have held many hands of daughters losing parents, or sisters losing brothers.  i have been the one on the other end of that phone or in the waiting room- giving that horrible news- knowing that in those few seconds, worlds change. 

'he's gone.'
'you have cancer.'
'it's HIV'

wishing i could wait, buy someone an ice cream sundae, let them go see a movie and laugh hard- before they fall to bits. before i share something that will brand that date forever in their mind, before sounds they had never noticed - the ticking of a fan- become forever linked with their diagnosis, or the second they lost their son.



saturday night is necessary.  it's the highlight of the week on many levels, mostly because it's set aside to give each other focused attention and processing time, and there is more to process here, living in another culture, away from what has always been home- we need to be more for each other here. last night in those eternal minutes of forced exposure, at the uninvited viewing of another family's extreme vulnerability- i began to cry too as it unfolded. 


because we all know those calls- those seconds -  when life as we knew it, is no more.  we all have our ticking clocks and tommy bahama ties and the smell of OR gas, or the song that was playing.  we all know loss, or can imagine it, and fear it, and hold our loved ones tighter when we think of it.


even though it felt like forever- the call was only a few minutes.  soon the mother and father, the sister and her husband got their bags and began to leave. people were quiet, as the family walked to their cars and drove away.  and then the world started up again.


the people on the patio drank their beer and laughed and shouted about the soccer game.  the scene had ended.  they were strangers. it's saturday night.


this added to our need for alone time- this added to the list of things to be processed.  thankfully i'm married to a guy who gets this, and me, so we quickly paid our bill and went for dinner. in the car we prayed for the family, whoever they are, where ever they are from, and for the one they lost.


the sushi restaurant was quiet, the sun had set, and the evening was cool.  it was windy where we sat outside- mike said we could have been anywhere.  he said when you move up on a hill or a mountain or into the sky- it becomes progressively windier.  the world from up there, from the blowing sky, looks smaller- and more the same. that view smooths over our differences that can scream loudly at ground level.


what does it matter that i know God? or try to? does it change those frozen, life changing moments?

yes and no.  they are there, and always will be.  but the perspective is different- the understanding of time is different, and purpose, and meaning.  those minutes and the news that makes them so awful and gut-wrenching,  are still just as painful- but there is also, an undeniable, and unfathomable peace that follows at some point.  that sits beside the sorrow- not removing it, but providing that breeze of promise- you will breathe again, you will even smile again, you are not alone.

it's hard for me to imagine those moments with out the context of a God who loves us- with out that peace that quietly whispers.  the darkness must be much darker, the agony even deeper. so i pray it for them- that for this family, who i accidentally witnessed hearing the worst news a mother or sister can hear,  somehow a light will shine, they will feel the everlasting arms,  the warmth of a sheltering sky, and the breeze of promise.