- Thomas Merton
Sometimes things just don’t make a bit of sense.
Sometimes, often actually, God allows things to happen that I don’t get.
Sometimes, in the story, rules change, and I’m confused.
Sometimes, in my story, things hurt, and I’m frustrated.
Sometimes I find myself groaning, “Why God, why?”
But, even still, I know…
God is not cruel.
He does not intend harm.
He is loving and good.
Always.
All I can do, when I’m confused and battered up, is chant this that I know to be true. Years of living has certainly tethered my heart to Jesus, but I can’t yet claim “unwavering faith”. God’s sovereignty over all life’s bruising twists and turns is truth in my mind, but my heart sometimes is yet convinced. Sometimes I doubt Him for a bit. How could I not? This world is filled with so much hurt. But, in His kindness, despite my waver, His goodness settles me all over again.
Even…
When governments make rules that make no sense, that harm children and blister our hearts.
When a family willing to say yes to adoption is told no.
When a family has an adoption file in hand, a child already in their hearts, but is told, “No, rules changed.”
When a family holds vigil by a broken-hearted son’s hospital bedside, praying with hope for a medical miracle, but the healing comes not on earth, but in heaven.
When children linger on waiting child lists.
When a newly adopted child wants nothing to do with being loved.
When a daughter with layers of medical trauma needs yet another IV.
When a traumatized boy rages, all these years later.
When the surgery has complications.
When the test results aren’t in our favor.
When teens join eager families, but their world is spinning so wildly out of control that they fight love.
When my own little medical needs daughter’s body stops functioning post-up and scrub draped nurses race her hospital bed into the OR at midnight due to renal failure.
Even still, God is not cruel.
He does not intend harm.
He is loving and good.
Always.
Sometimes, when life isn’t how I think it should be, when suffering wounds my heart, all I can do is chant to myself that He is good. Reminding myself, willing myself, to believe that He is good, even still. He made us some promises, didn’t He? In those moments, the best I can do is step out a door and let the sun soak life into my skin and allow the breeze to still me. Under the blue of the sky, evidence of Him cannot be denied, and it is there where I can consider His ever present love and sovereignty.
He’s the one who rains unexplainable peace in OR waiting rooms.
He’s the one who fills hearts with hope when all hope seems lost.
He’s the one who amasses prayer armies.
He’s the one who sends gentle angels in nursing scrubs.
He’s the one who fully and forever heals broken bodies and promises heavenly reunions.
He’s the one who promises to someday “wipe away every tear”.
He’s the one who paints rainbows.
He the one who washes the earth with rain.
He’s the one who tells the sun to burn unending light.
He’s the one who siphons joy back into wounded hearts.
He’s the one who stirs hearts to fight for those who can’t fight for themselves.
He’s the one who calls more and more new families to say yes to adoption.
He’s the one who pumps passion and the crazy kind of love into the adoption community.
He’s the one who sends the servant-hearted nanny into the orphanage.
He’s the one who sends the friend who “gets” what orphanage behaviors can do to a home.
He’s the one who placed the spunk and fight in the Chinese-American daughter whose hand holds mine.
He’s the one who turns night to merciful day, dark to light, mourning to joy, over and over again.
In all things, He is calling me to Him, whether I like the story, or not. He pursues me, and you, in life’s winters and its springs. In its harshness and its hopeful abundance.
When God allows hurt, I might be confused, but I refuse to believe that He is cruel. He’s promised to be our refuge, our stay in the storm, and to work it all out for our good and His glory. So even when I have to chant it to my own heart, I trust His goodness, even still. He sees things that I cannot. He is ever and always at work within governments, adoption agencies, hospital rooms, families and hearts.
Yours and mine.
God is not cruel.
He does not intend harm.
He is loving and good.
Always. Even still.
- Thomas Merton
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