Something felt familiar.  I was laying in my bed, consumed by sadness, loneliness, pain and grief.  At 17 weeks pregnant we were faced again with a routine appointment that revealed a heartbeat that had stopped.  Again. Twice in one year.  Two babies. Two miscarriages.  My sweet husband, with grief of his own, had no way to take away mine.  It is one of those moments in life when the acute pain of sadness is isolating.  Yet, there was something oddly familiar about this moment that was anchored to experiences from decades ago.

As a young woman in my twenties I had become convinced that marriage would be a gift denied to me.  For years I found myself without pursuers and romantically alone.  So I slowly came to the conclusion that God intended me for singleness.  By my early 30’s I was no longer trying to love life and find contentment until marriage.  I was grieving the total loss of a deep longing.  God, who was all powerful and could give me anything, seemed to be saying, “Never.”

A deep longing never to be fulfilled was familiar.  But somewhere under the layers of tears I had learned long ago where to find hope and companionship.

IS HE STILL GOOD?

In singleness I attended the weddings of most of my friends.  I saw their happiness and imagined their full lives of marital enjoyment.   In the loss of my second and third child I celebrated the birth of 6 babies, all born in the same months I would have been due to have my own.

With an undeniable belief that God exists and that He is in control over our world, we can sometimes find ourselves stuck.  If He is there and if He is able to bring good things into the lives of others, why not us?  Sure, I can understand why God would shield us from sinful desires, but is He still good if He withholds good desires?  Has He forgotten us?  Does He not see?  How could this possibly be loving?

Like Mary and Martha at the tomb of Lazarus, the easiest answer is to assume God has failed us.  “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”  Two women who both make the same accusation.  (Luke 11: 12 & 32)  Yes, that’s it.  He helps everyone else, but doesn’t love me enough to help me.

I consider it a special grace when Scripture answers my accusing heart.  When Jesus finds out that Lazarus is sick and about to die we are told, “Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus.  So, when he heard that Lazarus was ill he stayed two days longer in the place where he was.” (Luke 11:5-6)  He loved them, so he let Lazarus die.  He is up to something here and he wants us to know that whatever it is, it includes his love.

Although He can love us, be good and deny us what we desire, we should not make the mistake of believing that He does nothing.  Jesus loved Mary and Martha in their grief.  In their grief he offered two things.  First, he offered Himself. “When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled.  And he said, ‘where have you laid him?’ They said to him, ‘Lord, come and see,’ Jesus wept.  So the Jews said, ‘See how he loved him!’ But some of them said, ‘Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man also have kept this man from dying?'” (Luke 11:33-35) There it is, the accusation.  Did you catch it?  If he loved Lazarus wouldn’t he have kept him from dying?

JESUS WEEPS

Even in the deepest grief, my Spirit rebukes me when I am tempted to charge God with not knowing as much as I do about love.  Love finds it origin and anchoring in the character of God.  We start with Him to get our understanding of love.  And here at the tomb of Lazarus, love responds.  “Jesus wept.”  Let’s be clear.  Jesus is not weeping for Lazarus, as the onlookers suppose.  When Jesus does raise him from the dead, it is only to find one chapter later that the enemies of Jesus are plotting Lazarus’ death. (Luke 12:10)  I suspect that being brought back from the dead did not make Lazarus happier.  Now he gets to be the guy that dies twice in one lifetime.  Lucky him.

No, he is not weeping for Lazarus.  Jesus weeps when he sees his loved ones in grief and pain.

Let’s not underestimate how much we need this.  In pain, we may be tempted to cry out for a why.  I don’t know about you, but why wouldn’t help me.  If God had appeared to me after my second miscarriage and told me that countless lives would be saved as a result, I would at that very moment still feel crushed.  No, why doesn’t stop the tears.  What do I really need?  I need to not grieve alone.  I need God to weep with me.  Watching another friend be chosen by a good man and still feeling alone, I need a God who mourns with me and comforts me.  (2 Corinthians 1:3-5)  The comfort that comes in those private moments with Jesus is not an abstract idea, but a personally intimate time of healing and peace.

Second, Jesus offers to right the wrong.  I need a God who can make all things right again.  “Jesus said to her, I am the resurrection and the life.  Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.  Do you believe this?”  (Luke 11:25-26)  God, who came in the flesh and bore our sufferings, has promised to make all things new.  This is not the end of our story.  (Isaiah 35; Romans 8: 18-39)   Life is found in Jesus.

Somewhere in the middle of the tears, there is truth more profound and personally experienced than the grief itself.  God is there.  I am comforted.  I am not alone and it will not always be like this.  Although I now live in the aftermath of sins devastating effects,  I have found peace, comfort and joy sitting at his feet.  As much as God has blessed me through the encouragement of family, friends and other Christians, there is no substitute for Him and me when no one else is around.  It is here that I find rest for my soul.  (Matthew 11:29)

DOES SUFFERING MEAN GOD DOES NOT EXIST?

Finally, grief can make some question whether God is even there at all.  I find this odd. Grief is the irrepressible cry of the heart that says something has gone wrong.  Things are not supposed to be this way.  In grief we know most keenly that there is a way life is supposed to be and we are made most aware that something is not as it should be.

If God does not exist, there is no other way the world should be.  Grief is an illusion.

Only in the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Jesus of Nazareth can we find the answers to our deepest longings and know that our cry is an accurate reflection of reality. He validates our grief.  This is not the way life is supposed to be.  He weeps with us in our heartbreak and in the middle of it all there is beauty and rest.

How is there beauty and rest?  After the tears, there is a secret revealed.  Our deepest longing is for God Himself and to the one who seeks, this longing will never be denied. (Matthew 5:4-6)