Give the Day a Chance to Start

God cannot lie. I know He loves me and wants to bless me. But in knowing that profound love, I should also come to terms with the fact that God permitting me to endure this pain is part of His unfathomable love for me. For clarity's sake, I do not believe for one minute that God inflicted this pain upon me. Rather, He allows me to go through it for a purpose bigger and more grand than I can ever grasp.

Yance explains that pain is actually a friend--a signal that something is wrong and something has to be done. (Think cavity, toothache, root canal). Losing a child brings about the kind of pain that will most certainly linger for a lifetime. So perhaps my prayer should be, not that God take away the pain (which I've learned is impossible), but that He redeem it.

Redemption is in the molding of my character; to have the capacity to trust Him when this world fails me. Redemption is in the lives touched by Brooke's story; as parents it is now Michael's and my duty to make sure her story is told for God's glory. Redemption is in the reaffirmation in my heart that God is God and that He has not, nor will He ever, abandon me; that I bow down to His sovereignty and run to Him in the pain instead of running away in bitterness.

Though I will never desire to endure this pain, I will remember that pain has its purpose, a purpose of which I will willingly, though painfully, do my best to be a good steward.