This is How We Fight our Battles
On a rare night during Christmas vacation of 2016, both Madison and Matt were home from college. Much to my delight, they agreed to watch a movie, Life, Animated, that tells the true story of an autistic young adult and his family, and how he learned to make sense of the world by using scenes from Disney movies.
In the movie, the main character, Owen, distraught from a breakup with his girlfriend, calls his mother and asks her, “Mom, why is life so full of pain and tragedy?” Sitting beside Matt on the couch that night when the scene played out, I became gripped with sadness and a strange fear swept over me. At the time, I chalked it up to the realization that I couldn’t protect my son from those same emotions and questions. But honestly, I couldn’t shake the quote or the question and I found myself pondering it frequently.
Fast forward just five weeks from that family movie night and our world unravels with pain and tragedy we couldn’t have seen coming. I look back on these little details now and see this was just one of a hundred ways that God was preparing us for Matt’s battle with cancer. Pain and tragedy are inescapable. Even the Bible is clear about it, saying “In this world you WILL have trouble.” John 16:33
Yet one of the hardest parts of being a Christian is making peace with God’s sovereignty and the undeniable and abundant pain and tragedy in this world. If God is all-loving and good, then how come my friend was diagnosed with breast cancer this week? How come our friends’ hearts are breaking over devastating news of their children’s health? How come another friend mourns the loss of relationship with her daughter who has lost her way? How could two young children be attending the funeral of their 40-year old mother as I write this?
Sometimes, like this week, the heaviness of the sorrow around us can be suffocating, leaving us to cry out, “God, have you lost control? Or have you just forgotten us?” It is in these times, I’ve found it most helpful to remind myself of what I know - that God is never-changing, always faithful, all-loving, all-knowing and all-powerful. Author, artist, and disability advocate Joni Eareckson Tada’s summary of God’s promises give me great comfort and strength. After 50 years of being confined to a wheelchair as a quadriplegic, she said, “Sometimes God uses things he hates to accomplish things he loves.”
Today I believe that God hates the pain and tragedy of this broken world and trust that He can and will use it to accomplish more than we can even imagine. This is how I fight my battles. Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief. (Mark 9:24)