Three Beliefs to Embrace When no Answer is Enough
She asked me with tear-filled eyes, “Where do I go from here?” And the hardest answer for me to give to this person struggling with a dying loved one was, “There is nowhere to go. You are ‘here’ for right now.” Bearing witness to another’s pain is always hard but often sessions end with some resolution. Not this one, not this time. What do we do when there is no resolution? What do we do when sitting in pain is our only option? How do we hold on to hope when all we see is hell?
No Right Answer
We can run, but we cannot hide from the pain that comes with living in a fallen world. We see things we were never meant to see. We endure pain we were never meant to carry. It is hard to look in the face of terminal illnesses, to see evil escape justice on this earth, or wake up knowing only a day of pain awaits. And all this often occurs without an end in sight.
You may wonder, as do I at times, what is the point of all this if pain is what we are going to experience? Why even be here? Great question. I do not have a “right” answer to this. However, through my own pain, I have wrestled with these questions. Sometimes it seemed I had more questions than answers. While I have found peace for many of my questions, I do not know that I have found answers per se. Some of the beliefs I have claimed have provided me a sense of resolution, while peace covered many of my circumstances without having resolution or answers.
Three beliefs
Life is going to be hard
Jesus did not sugar coat this. He lived a life of hard: rejected, beaten, and crucified, he understood how painful life could be. He tells us in John 16:33, “In this world you will have trouble.” Expect it. And, no, I do not have all the answers to why God “allows” things to happen. I do believe I know God’s character well enough to know that God is still in control though even when we are in the valley, the slimy pit, or in the fire surrounded by lions.
When people are contemplating whether they want to address their pain, I tell them they are going to have to pick their hard: either go through the pain of healing now or ten years from now when all the pain arises again, you can do it then with ten years more of stuff to work through. Pick your hard. Life is often about picking our hard. Lions or valleys today? Sometimes we have a choice and sometimes life just gives us one. However, when we hold onto knowing that God is sovereign, He is in control, this can make the hard a little more bearable.
Not everything is going to make sense
We are a society that wants to make sense of everything. If there is a reason for x,y,z, maybe we believe we can tolerate it better? However, many events are not so nicely packaged. There may never be a reason, or a good enough one anyway, for why a child has cancer or is murdered. There may never be a reason that a young married couple must fight through grieving a loss of a child or not being able to bear children. There may never be a reason why your family, or my family, faced death after death after death.
But here we are.
The one thing that has kept me from sinking on the hardest days is knowing that God calls me to a place of peace, “Come to me all who are weary, and I will give you rest” (Matt. 11:28). There is a space and a place for my tears, my screams, my nightmares, and everything else; and there is space for yours too. He holds them all and knows their depths (Psalm 56:8). He is with us even in our darkest nights.
God redeems
Redemption is not just for the soul. God can redeem any part of us that we surrender. But surrendering can be the hardest part. To surrender our pain sometimes feels like defeat. Sometimes pain becomes more familiar than peace. However, to regain that peace, we need surrender our pain.
When I was in my early thirties, I was still holding on to the pain of my father’s death when I was nine and my mother’s death when I was twenty-four. I often appeared happy, enthusiastic, and joyful, but I was really dying on the inside. Pain seeped into every fiber of my being without a soul knowing. I found myself one evening desperately crying out to God, “Why did you take them and leave me?” I did not receive an answer with detailed reasons as to why anything happened. Instead, I opened my Bible and let it fall open wherever and started reading.
Psalm 78 is where I landed. At verse four redemption was found. God did not supply an answer to my why, but he did supply a redemption of my pain: tell the next generation of my power and might to come. This may not seem like redemption for you, but in that moment of questioning my existence, this was the redeeming of my pain. This instruction to keep going to tell the next generation of His power and might brought me the peace I needed. I cannot even begin to count how often the death of my parents has helped another person, has provided me the empathy I needed to help a client, and allowed me to see the power of helping the next generation learn to heal from devastating circumstances. This is redemption of pain. He redeemed my pain, and he can redeem yours.
Conclusion
Your pain may be so raw right now that no words can bring you solace. You have more questions than answers and, really, even if given an answer that answer probably will not suffice. You want out of where you are right now, and you feel helpless to accept right here is simply where you are. Know that in your “right here, right now,” you can have hope in the midst of your hell. You can have peace in the midst of your pain. Even if it is only a glimmer of God’s hand, hold on to those moments. They will help you endure the next moment, and the next, and the next.