A Secret

I don't know about you...

but I struggle with the thought that God has a plan. I struggle with telling myself that God knows best. I struggle with the fact that God could have saved Jenna and He didn't. My faith has been dismantled, torn apart, scrupulously analyzed, turned upside down, chiseled, wounded, interrogated, and left desolate to tell whether or not it would survive the past five months.

My faith has changed. 

My faith in the God who could have saved her has come to find out something about Him I never knew. It's one of those secrets of God that can only be manifested in the deepest, darkest pits of absolute pain. To be honest, it's one of those secrets I wish I knew nothing about. But since grief has redefined my life, it is a secret I have come to cherish.

I have heard all my life that Jesus Christ died for my sins and how He bore my sins on the cross so that I could have a way to go to Heaven when I died. One day, I accepted Him as my Savior, believing that He did indeed die and carried my sins to that cross and paid the debt I could never pay.

What I didn't know was that on that cross, he also bore my griefs. The Bible says He is "a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief". Acquainted with grief? I have read those words before, but this time those words just flew off the page because that's me! I know grief more than I ever wanted to know it or be acquainted with it. It is deeper and far more hopeless than I ever could have imagined. Grieving a child is what we often say to be the harshest form of grief. I would have to agree. I didn't just bury my baby; I buried a toddler who would never take her first bite, lose a tooth, need a Barbie band-aid or take her first steps. I buried a girl who would never paint her fingernails or wear her Sunday best on Easter to church, I buried a young lady who would never go off to college or fall in love and get married. I buried a woman who would never have children or grandchildren. I buried everything she could have been. I buried my heart and love in the purest form. 

But Christ... He bore my griefs. It comforts me to read that He didn't just heal the sick and raise the dead. He knows my griefs. He knows. He is not just about the happy endings, He is familiar with the sad ones too. He acquainted Himself with this grief so that He could comfort my broken heart one day.

In that same verse, the Bible says that He also "carried our sorrows". The sorrow of those last moments of her life flashing through my head. The sorrow of knowing I will never get to use her beautiful name. The sorrow of knowing that life itself fled my baby girl's body. The sorrow of knowing the doctors did all they could to save her life. The sorrow of knowing that she is gone. The sorrow of the loss that empty arms can never satisfy. The sorrow of the memory of the pain her tiny body went through. The sorrow of the reality of her death at the grave. He carried all these sorrows with Him. 

A lot of people IRL will tell me they are sorry for what happened, and that is really all they can say. Let me just say that I am grateful for their sincere sympathy and understand their loss of words. But Christ actually carried my sorrow. He didn't just tell me He was sorry it happened, He carried this pain and sorrow because He knew one day I would need someone who feels the exact pain that I feel. So when I take my broken heart to Him, He knows all about it. 

And what's even more baffling to me is that He bore all my griefs and carried my sorrows way before they even happened. To think that He carried mine plus the entire world's grief and sorrow just helps me.

When someone shared these verses with me, it was like a light bulb turned on. These are familiar verses but they bring new light in this dark place of grief. 

"He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted."

Isaiah 53:3, 4