When the Pieces Don't Seem to Fit | Previous Challenge Entry

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TITLE: When the Pieces Don't Seem to Fit | Previous Challenge Entry
By Sylvia Young
12/01/16
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“Why did this happen to me?” my son whispered before he’s wheeled in to get his MRI. We’d been waiting for hours in the Emergency Room, and now the doctor was concerned enough about Michael’s condition that she’d ordered the test. Before going in, she explained that they were looking for bleeds, growths or infection.

My heart raced at those words. How had we gotten to this point? Why didn’t I bring him in earlier? What was going to happen to my son?

Worse, she said this in front of Michael. He’s old enough to understand the meaning of her words, and his eyes had widened with terror.

“Am I going to die?” he asked.

“Shush, darling,” I said, stroking his forehead. “God’s got you. You don’t need to worry about anything. Jesus is right here with us in this room.”

I don’t want to give him false reassurances…just the truth. I pressed my face to his, and our tears mingled with each other.

I gained great comfort from the words, and as I spoke the promises of God’s word over him, peace entered my heart. However, just thirty minutes later, as I stood outside the MRI room listening to the machine whirl and pound, my mind kept jumping to the possibility that there might be something seriously wrong. I didn’t want to question God’s will, but of course I did. I’m human.

Even though I’m far along enough in my faith to know that things aren’t random, that God does have a purpose for everything, I know I will never understand it all in my whole life time.

“Why do I have to go through this?” Michael asked me again once we’re back home. “Why do people have to suffer? Did I do something wrong?”

“God’s not like that, sweetheart. He doesn’t punish us to smarten us up, but He may have let this happen to teach us something.”

After that conversation, I made a list of possibilities what we might learn from this experience. When the time was right, I read over the list with my soon-to-be thirteen-year-old boy. He seemed to gain some comfort from my thoughts, but the truth is that I really don’t have THE answer. Only God does.

This story has a happy ending. The pictures came back clear. None of the big, scary factors were evident, and we were sent home, but the question of what was wrong remains unanswered.

After a month of suffering, I finally did something I should have done from the start: I asked friends and family to actively pray for him. I did this on a Sunday morning. Somehow, it wasn't until Wednesday that I realized Michael had been on the mend for three days. It wasn't an obvious miracle; it didn't happen in an instant, but it was a clear answer to prayer. Now, Michael, myself, and all my friends and family can see that it was God who healed him, and not dismiss it as anything else.

God does answer prayer, but He doesn’t always let us know what the answer is, at least, not in the time frame we’d like.

Sometimes when life is too hard to handle, I tell my kids that we can’t see the whole picture. We don’t know why things happen because we only have one small part of a puzzle that has billions of pieces. We get our little piece and try our best to learn what to do with it, but ultimately God is the only One who sees the whole thing. He is not only the One who can see it all, but He made it all, and there are times when all we can do is trust. And then trust some more.

There is one particular verse in the Bible that gives me great comfort in times of distress. “We rejoice in our sufferings because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us because God has poured out His love into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, whom He has given us.” (Romans 5:3-5)

We will suffer, some more than others. Life is hard, and we won’t always know why, but we do have hope…and a future. That’s another promise (Jeremiah 29:11).

So, much like a massive jigsaw puzzle in which the pieces don’t seem to fit together in any kind of logical way, I just surrender everything I don’t know to the One who does know…and wait.

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