When good people pass away\nit can cause those left behind to start questioning things \u2013 Why did this good\nperson with so much to live for have to be taken too soon? Why would a loving God take them from us when\nthey are so needed by so many here? What\ngood purpose does them being taken from us possibly serve? <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This week when my husband got word that his cousin\u2019s 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\u2019d 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… <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The reality is that I don\u2019t have answers to those questions – but what I do know is that whenever I\u2019ve gone through really hard times in my life, it is in and through those hard times that I\u2019ve discovered how close my relationship to God actually is. Because it\u2019s easy to say you believe in God, but discovering how much you\u2019ll be willing to trust in God when you\u2019ve been hurt deeply or when someone you love has been taken away, isn\u2019t so easy… C.S. Lewis explains it best when he said:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cYou never know how much\nyou really believe anything until its truth of falsehood becomes a matter of\nlife and death to you. It is easy to say you believe a rope to be strong and\nsound as long as you are merely using it to cord a box. But suppose you had to\nhang by that rope over a precipice. Wouldn\u2019t you then first discover how much\nyou really trusted it?\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Life\u2019s most difficult\nmoments force us to choose whether we are going to draw closer to God or pull\nfurther away. They help us realize that\nbelieving in God means trusting Him at all times\u2026even those times our ability\nto see the purpose as to why we have to go through what we are isn\u2019t clear\u2026actually,\nespecially in those times\u2026 <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I know that God is a\nloving Father and I have come to trust that that one day, whether its later in\nthis life or not until we\u2019ve returned back to our Father one day, all of the\nanswers to our questions of \u201cwhy\u201d will be made clear to us and we will see the purpose\nof all the hard things we went through.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019m so sad for my husband\u2019s cousin and his children.\u00a0 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. \u00a0And I am eternally grateful to know that God provides a way for families to be together forever and that Rollin\u2019s cousin and his wife and their children have the opportunity to all be reunited again someday. \u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n