Three years ago this morning I woke up an excited groom-to-be. Dad and I were going to have breakfast together and have a much needed father-son talk, if you know what I mean.
Our family was staying in the basement of some friends in Canon City, Colorado, where my fiancée lived and our wedding was going to be held. I went out to the living room that morning to have personal devotions. I was tired and doing my best to be “spiritual.”
Mom woke up around the same time and came out to the living room, as well. After a few minutes, she broke the silence and asked how Teresa and I were doing. I remember feeling slightly annoyed—”I’m meeting with God, can’t you see?”
We talked a little and soon others were up and Dad and I headed out the door for our breakfast.
A few hours later I was sitting at my girlfriend’s house and received a text from my sister, “Pray for us. We were just hit by a truck.”
Coming from LA, fender benders are looked at as a quarterly event, but something about this one seemed a little different. Why would we need to pray about a fender bender?
I called her and soon realized she wasn’t thinking very clearly. I got enough info to figure out where they were and that things were actually quite bad. My Mom, my sister, and brother were on their way to meet up with Dad at WalMart, but that wasn’t going to be happening.
Teresa and I jumped in my car and went to pick up Dad and head out to the scene. I still remember it clearly, coming over the hill and seeing a mangled truck in the ditch and a crowd of medical personnel standing out in the field.
The field where our totaled van stood still at the end of a fifty yard track of tire marks in the dirt. The field where Mom and Christopher lay on stretchers.
“What does this mean?” I thought to myself. Our wedding was in four days and I remember having images of walking Mom down the aisle with crutches, or at worst, pushing her in a wheel chair.
That’s why I didn’t expect the chaplain to walk in with the doctor when we finally arrived at the hospital in Colorado Springs two hours later. When I said, “See you later,” to Mom as they lifted her into the helicopter, I actually thought I would see her later. Sooner than later.
My worst nightmare came true when the doctor explained that her heart quit pulsing soon after the chopper left the ground at the accident scene, and they tried everything they could to get it going again, but couldn’t.
Not only was Mom going to be injured at my wedding, but she wasn’t even going to be there.
It’s been three years since that tragic event, but it still affects me like it did that day. Tragedy is a thief in many ways, but primarily because it comes and takes something we love without negotiating with us first. We’re left in a spin, trying to make sense of what just happened.
And sometimes it takes a while for the pieces to fit together.
People quote Romans 8:28 as if they never wondered what in the world Paul meant when he wrote it. As if just mentioning the reference is supposed to bring some kind of healing and sense of joy.
Anyone who does that exposes the fact that they have never gone through tragedy. Or if they have, they went through it only with their head and not their heart. In the face of tragedy, there is a lot about God that doesn’t make sense in the heart. And that’s okay.
I still find myself awkward around other people who have lost a loved one. I don’t know what to say.
The year after Mom was killed, Teresa’s cousin died in a similar accident. As we went to her funeral and did the best we could to comfort her family, I felt like a klutz.
What do you say when you know that in the years to follow, when no one else is looking, they will be going throughout their day feeling relatively chipper about it when all of a sudden, out of nowhere, the grief and excruciating sense of loneliness overwhelms them and leaves them feeling like the world is crashing in around them and that it too will take them to their grave of depression, suffocating them with hopelessness?
All I could find to say were silly trifles like “I’m praying for you” and “I’m sorry.”
That’s the easy way out. When it hurts too much to actually feel with people you can always say, “I’m praying for you.”
But what about Romans 8:28? Does God really work everything together for good? And if it seems like it is not happening, does that mean I don’t love Him enough?
As I look back on my life I can see how God is redeeming different tragedies. Most of those painful experiences have brought about positive change in my own life. But I still don’t understand Mom’s death. I’m not sure I ever will. In some ways life seems to only get worse the longer it goes.
What if Paul wasn’t actually talking about tragedy in Romans 8? If you consider the context of the passage, he is actually talking about suffering against the flesh. When we are facing a fleshly weakness, but resist it and submit to the Spirit of God out of love for Him, God always works it together for good so that we are conformed to His image.
“Working all things together for good” seems to indicate that God orchestrates the tragedy. As if He is making things take place that feel painful in the moment, but in the end will work together for good. I am less sure Romans 8 was meant to be taken that way. This world is broken. It has been since Eden, and some things in this life will never turn out good this side of Heaven.
A more accurate picture of God, I believe, is that He weeps with us. He grieves the brokenness of this world with us as He grieved with Martha and Marry over the death of their brother. And that he promises, if we believe Him, we will see the glory of the Lord.
So, He went to the cross to bring redemption to the broken world. God bore our pain and laid Himself down on the cross so that one day we can see the glory of the Lord over the tragedies we experience today.
There are a few ways I see pain has shaped me, and in the shaping I see myself drawing closer to God. Life circumstances haven’t necessarily changed. The pain is still there—I still want Mom back! But slowly, surely, I see God bringing about a kind of redemption I believe only tragedy can bring.*
Tragedy causes me to rely more on God
I’m learning to live more in God’s power instead of my own. While going through tragedy made me disillusioned with God in some ways, I’ve discovered that He’s the only one that can bring any good out of it. He’s the only one that can carry me and my family through. And anything meaningful in life happens only by Him.
As I rely more on God, I feel a quiet joy being built within me, and I think that’s what God wants. I believe God’s aim for us is to as gently, yet intentionally, as possible cause us to rely on Him more and more until we find all our joy only in Him.
Tragedy increases my capacity for joy
Romans 5 says that I can rejoice in suffering because suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character and character produces hope. In other words, the more suffering I experience, the more potential I have for joy, because where there is hope, there is joy.
Tragedy enables me to identify with others
I could always tell those who had also lost a loved one as they came through the viewing line at Mom’s funeral. They had a look in their eye and a feel in their hug that others did not have. I can’t really explain it because you can’t really copy it. It just is.
I hope that even though I still don’t know what to say to others who face tragedy they can feel my care for them, because every time I find out someone died or was killed, I think what it was like to kiss my mother’s dead body and the feeling of something you love so deeply simply slipping away for the rest of your life.
I couldn’t feel with others if I had not also gone through that tragedy. I believe my greatest avenues of ministry are in the areas where I have experienced tragedy and found healing.
Tragedy gives me a more eternal perspective
When I experience pain or loss because of something that is completely out of my control, I am faced with the reality of my temporariness.
It is not a positive thing to be consumed with trucks, sports, and bank accounts—that all burns someday. The positive is to be engulfed in a story for eternity and through tragedy our focus is more aligned with that story.
Tragedy provides an opportunity for deeper worship
Before Mom died, most of my worship was about God’s blessings and what He does for me. Now I realize that not everything God does feels good or makes sense. I’m forced to either quit worshiping God altogether, or begin worshiping Him for who He is and not just what He does.
Just because we go through tragedy doesn’t mean we will rely more on God, have greater joy, identify better with others, have a more eternal perspective or worship God at a deeper level. But it does mean that God invites to be molded in this way. The key is to remain vulnerable before Him.
I still meet with God for personal devotions just like I did when Mom interrupted me. Sometimes it doesn’t seem like God shows up. The vulnerable thing to do is to stay there. Engage in prayer, reading His word—even when it feels like it’s not doing anything special. To just close my heart and say, “If God’s not going to speak then I won’t meet with Him,” is to close my heart to God.
In the face of tragedy, closing our hearts to God only ensures future depression and deeper pain. Stay vulnerable before Him.
Does God really work everything out for good? Not necessarily. This world is broken. Things don’t always feel fixed. We don’t always see any good coming from tragedy. But God is redeeming the brokenness we experience. It’s not always a grand and glorious story to tell others. Sometimes it’s just in being shaped in little ways to rely more on Him.
If you have gone through tragedy, how has God shaped you through it? Or do you still feel confused about it? Share in the comments, or send me a private message using the contact form below. God bless!
*This section has been updated to reflect more accurately what I am learning about Paul’s writings in Romans 8.
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