It is the question that is never answered. If God is good, why does he allow suffering and pain? In 1000 Gifts Ann Vosskamp begins to address that dilemma. Though it can never totally be answered. She talks about her son cutting his hand in a farm accident, but living and keeping the hand. That same week a neighboring farm boy dies and she recalls a brother in law who has watched two of his children die from a rare disease. Why are some people spared and others not? God seems so arbitrary in the way in metes out pain. I don’t want to trivialize someone’s pain by trying to explain something so complex in a 300 words blog post.
I can only say that in the book she talks about giving thanks for even the struggles and the trauma. So as an exercise, I thanked God for my loneliness. I thanked him for the uncertainty of my future. I thanked him for my grieving the loss of my husband. I thanked him for all the ugly dark things in my life. I didn’t pretend like those things were good because they are not. But they do have the power to transform us (if we choose) in a way that happy victorious things do not. And the sad tragic things also have the power to connect us to other human beings. So I am practicing gratitude in all things and waiting like a flower opening to the sun, about to bloom. We’ll see…