The text message came to me. The words, sad and angry and fearful all at once.
"Why? Why can't God stop this?"
And my heart hurt. My words froze. All of the things that I could say got lost under my own remembered pain, my own remembered helplessness.
And I answered: I don't know.
Because I just don't. I don't know why things happen to people. I don't know why good people become different, struck down by disease and addiction.
I don't know.
I've walked this my entire life. I have loved God my whole life. And I still have no answers.
The situation has peeled away all of my layers of healing I have applied. It has unearthed all of my own sadness. And I thank God for that. I thank Him for the remembered feeling, for the pain, and for the feelings of being at odds with this world we live in.
Because it reminds me that I don't have any answers.
The world is a broken place. Filled with broken people. A world that is becoming more and more lost and broken by the day. And the only thing we have to cling to when the world shatters is God.
But to do that we have to lay down all of our own understanding. We have to look past the people in our lives to see the creatures God has made. Creatures who have their own path to walk. Nobody's walk is our own. We can't walk for them. We can't drag them along.
And we can't make anyone better. Even those we love more than life. And even those who should be our shield and our fortress. Those who should protect us and those that should hold us up.
They fall too. And their falling resonates forever in our own world.
We get angry. We shake our fists and we cry. We beg and we plead. But some things cannot be reasoned with. And some things cannot be fixed.
Some things can't be fixed.
Not by human hands, or human words, or human deeds.
My parents had their own walk, long before I was born. The had their own path to God. Do I agree with their choices? No. But I have come to know, through tears and agony and self blame, that there was nothing in this world I could have done to change they steps they took.
It was their path. Not mine.
The moment of letting go of that was the most heart rending of my entire life. The pain of it was intense and searing. I felt like I was going to die. I felt sick. I felt angry and ashamed and disgusted.
Until I handed it to God. Until I said. "I cannot."
Cannot carry this.
Cannot hurt this way.
Cannot feel responsible.
Cannot worry this much.
Cannot hurt this much.
Cannot take into myself their pain and make it my own.
That is the only answer I have, after 35 years in this skin, loving my Savior.
I Don't know why these things happen. I don't know how to fix them. I don't know how to make the pain go away.
But I do know who can, and does and will. And until I reach Heaven, that will have to be enough.
