Hard Times Lead Us To Question

When good people pass away it can cause those left behind to start questioning things – Why did this good person with so much to live for have to be taken too soon?  Why would a loving God take them from us when they are so needed by so many here?  What good purpose does them being taken from us possibly serve? 

When I lost my best friend Steve years ago I remember the despair I felt that someone so good had been taken away so suddenly and I remember dropping to my knees and asking God all of those questions. 

This week when my husband got word that his cousin’s wife, who is only 40 years old and the mother of three children, passed away of a brain tumor.  As my husband recounted to me his conversation he’d had with his cousin and the pains the family was going through at her passing I was reminded of those very questions all over again…

The reality is that I don’t have answers to those questions – but what I do know is that whenever I’ve gone through really hard times in my life, it is in and through those hard times that I’ve discovered how close my relationship to God actually is. Because it’s easy to say you believe in God, but discovering how much you’ll be willing to trust in God when you’ve been hurt deeply or when someone you love has been taken away, isn’t so easy…   C.S. Lewis explains it best when he said:

“You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth of falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you. It is easy to say you believe a rope to be strong and sound as long as you are merely using it to cord a box. But suppose you had to hang by that rope over a precipice. Wouldn’t you then first discover how much you really trusted it?”

Life’s most difficult moments force us to choose whether we are going to draw closer to God or pull further away.  They help us realize that believing in God means trusting Him at all times…even those times our ability to see the purpose as to why we have to go through what we are isn’t clear…actually, especially in those times…     

I know that God is a loving Father and I have come to trust that that one day, whether its later in this life or not until we’ve returned back to our Father one day, all of the answers to our questions of “why” will be made clear to us and we will see the purpose of all the hard things we went through.

I’m so sad for my husband’s cousin and his children.  I wish I had words that could take the pain they are going through away but there are no words that can do that. We can only weep with them, express our love to them, and ask in prayer for God to send angels to comfort them as they go through this incredibly hard thing.  And I am eternally grateful to know that God provides a way for families to be together forever and that Rollin’s cousin and his wife and their children have the opportunity to all be reunited again someday.  

~Amy Rees Anderson (author of the book “What Awesome Looks Like: How To Excel in Business & Life” )

2 Comments

  • Laura Schuchman Townsend says:

    Any, your such a incredible person, I know Steve loved you very much. Im and old friend of his, he actually did my baptism. Its hard to follow all the lives he touched. Its been such a long time now but seems like yesterday. I just wanted to say thank you for being such a inspiration to others.

  • Laura Schuchman Townsend says:

    Amy, your such a incredible person, I know Steve loved you very much. Im and old friend of his, he actually did my baptism. Its hard to follow all the lives he touched. Its been such a long time now but seems like yesterday. I just wanted to say thank you for being such a inspiration to others.

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