Where Was God During My Suffering?
This is a fun question. I’ve asked this quite a few times in my life and I know I’m not alone. I walked into a church in July 2021 for the first time in 8+ years. To be honest, it was surprising to me that I even gave God a chance again. After experiencing a lot of loss for many years, it felt like my relationship with God was very, very strained. I know that when a lot of people go through pain and heartbreak, the reaction can often be to get angry at God. For me, my reaction was just straight-up disconnection. It wasn’t immediate, but over those years, I just felt more and more distant from God. It felt like I couldn’t reconcile what was happening in my life with what I thought I knew about God - that God was loving and saw me and took care of me. It didn’t feel like it during those years. I didn’t harbor anger or resentment really, I just felt like I needed a break. Although I never felt anger toward God, I did feel like faith just wasn’t working for me. It felt like something was missing.
Fast forward to 2021: I walked into a church and much to my surprise, I liked it. I was pleasantly surprised by what I heard, how I felt, and how people greeted me and seemed to take interest in me. I was still super skeptical after week one.
During all those years that I felt disconnected, I feel like it is fair to say that I still felt this small presence of God somewhere under the surface, but I don’t think I could really even recognize it at the time. I still carried the belief that God was God, but I felt distant from the God I thought I knew before my challenges. What I’m beginning to realize now is that God never left me. It is certainly true that I didn’t feel God’s presence strongly, but I know that God never left. Over all those years, I was carried through hardship after hardship, joy after joy. That was God, I just didn’t know it at the time.
Since 2021, I’ve been to church almost every Sunday. I’m not saying that to get a gold star or anything like that. But I want to say that for me, that is significant. I fully believe you can have a relationship with God without being in a church building, but what I will say is, being surrounded by a community of deeply good, loving people, really helps me to see and experience God in a tangible way on a weekly basis. It is not an exaggeration to say that probably on 90% of those Sundays, tears have been flowing out of my eyes throughout the entire service. Sometimes those moments have been gentle little streams of water out of my eyes and sometimes it is a full-on, uncontrollable crying session (I have witnesses LOL). I can’t really understand why this keeps happening because there is not necessarily an explanation for it. What I will say is I feel something going on inside of my bones and in my heart that I can’t describe over these past almost two years. I feel the presence of God in my life so deeply in a way I have never felt before. I think the best way I can describe these feelings is the feeling of a long-awaited embrace from a parent who really knows you, sees you, and knows the depths of your soul… that feeling of finally being home. As I pick back up my faith journey in this season of my life, it has felt like I’m not equipped with the words to be able to describe the encounter with God that I’m having in this moment. But I do know that my constant tears are telling me a story and giving me important information that I’m paying attention to. I know the tears have to be God because those tears were not created by Kelly alone (I rarely cry, so this is really something different).
Although my love for God and my faith were somewhere in the background for many years, what I see now is all of the ways God carried me on my journey. There was blessing after blessing, love after heartache, deep care from my family and friends, new jobs and adventures. There has been a lot of good through the tough stuff. God did that. It wasn’t an accident. I’m here because God carried me through and I was so caught up in my own cloud of stuff that I couldn’t even see God on the other side of it, right there, sitting next to me like a best friend or loving parent ready to welcome me back into their arms. God’s steadfast patience, love, care, and provision overwhelm me. It is other-worldly. I think it can be hard for us to even try to wrap our brains around that type of love so we run away from it. When I think back now, I think my heart couldn’t even handle the fact that someone saw me and loved me in all of my pain. So I armored up and pretended I could handle it all on my own. News flash: I couldn’t. But God has been there. All along. Waiting patiently for a daughter to return home. I did. And it’s better than the home I thought I lived in before.
This version of my Christ-following life looks different than the first version. I think that’s normal and healthy and should be celebrated. This version is much less judgmental and much more committed to showing up authentically and Christ-like in my own life. This version of me is not concerned as much with dogma and doctrine but with doing my best to be the hands and feet of Jesus. This version of me is less concerned with reciting Bible verses or trying to prove I’m a “good Christian” (what does that even mean?), and way more concerned with having a real experience with God. For me, a real experience with God means being real myself. It means showing up with all of my mess, being honest about my flaws, and the ways I’ve hurt others and myself. I’m now choosing to leave it all before God, without any shame or negative self-talk. This version feels like freedom. It feels a lot more like a real relationship and a lot more transformative.
As I’ve grown and matured, my faith has too. It has gone through many versions and many seasons. It has faced trials and it has come out much stronger on the other side. This version of my faith is deeply connected to the suffering of Jesus because Jesus is deeply connected to my suffering and the suffering of all of humanity. The crucifixion wasn’t pretty, people. I don’t need to put on a show for the God who knows pain and suffering intimately. This is the core of Christianity, really, to be united with each other and with God in suffering, resurrection and transformation.
Faith is a journey, not a destination. It doesn’t need to look perfect (it’s not going to be). We should celebrate when it evolves! It means we’re growing and changing and God is up to some good work inside of us. I’m really happy with the 2023 version of my faith, and I’m excited to see what it continues to evolve into for the rest of my earthly life. I’m not the same that I was, and I have God to thank for that. God has been with me in my own suffering, my rebirth and my transformation. God is there. God always has been and always will be.
