Some sweet friends of mine just experienced the horror of delivering their lifeless baby girl at 18 weeks. This is after they buried their infant son just a few years back, and have suffered through 3 miscarriages in between. 5 babies that they have gone through excitement and joy and dreaming and hoping just to end in a devastating tragedy. When does it stop?
As a young adult I thought suffering was a transient and limited thing. It was meant to teach important life lessons, and once those lessons were learned the trial would end and that would be it.
My middle years taught me such a different truth though. Suffering isn’t something brief to be passed through— suffering is an invitation into the very heart of God. Since the best thing I can do with my life is love God and love people, whatever brings an increase to that goal then has to ultimately be incredibly good for myself, and for those my life touches.
It is a very painful truth to accept though, much less embrace. When we experience the sacred being ripped from our lives over and over again it gives way to some big questions about the goodness of a God who has said His plans for us are for good and not disaster; a future of hope. (Jeremiah 29:11)
Over the years, an especially long season of suffering has shown me that grief, loss, deep pain, and crushing brokenness have been the best teachers in instructing me how to best experience Jesus’ flawless love, and have taught me to have compassion and love for others in a way I never could have known before the hard roads of suffering I have found myself on.
It has not always been with open arms that I have embraced the hardships in my life though. Not even close. I have had long, hard wrestling matches with God with lots of searching and hard questions.
For me, if a terminal disease is the way for me to learn greater love for God and people, then I must count it a gift, not something to be endured and rushed through as quickly as possible. The suffering I experience now is only going to get harder and harder, and it won’t end until I die, but every day I endure I am pressed more into the heart of God… and that allows me to walk through the valley of the shadow of death with a God who promises to comfort me (Matthew 5:8), renew my strength (Isaiah 40:31), strengthen and help me (Isaiah 41:10). Mysteriously enough, the process of walking with him through that valley and beside those waters is what teaches me how to better love and care for others.
God may still choose to heal me, but only if my healing presses me further into love. Only if healing can accomplish eternally what a terminal illness cannot.
My prayers these days are less for the miracle I used to beg for, and instead for more days here to practice loving God and people, and I fight hard for that, especially for my husband and my children.
My most pressing question is no longer, “Why doesn’t God heal me?” but, “What capacity would I have for loving and empathizing with others if healing was my story.”
Nobody likes to feel stuck in suffering, but before you rush your hardest seasons away, consider what character is being developed in you that you would not have otherwise had the opportunity to grow into, and whose lives you are able to reach out and make an eternal impact on because of the fire you have walked through. It is painful, friends, but it is also some sacred , holy ground you get to stand on when what shatters you also becomes what helps you find your true purpose in life.
Choosing Hope 
Incredible wisdom and maturity born of agonizing pain and suffering. May the Lord apply it to my heart. Thank you and God bless you, Hannah.
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