I Do Not Understand

"For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, 

declares the Lord." - Isaiah 55:8

I was talking to someone recently about losing a baby, someone who knew because she'd walked through it herself many years ago, and she said, "We just can't understand what God's doing...We can try to, but we're not ever going to figure this out."

When she said it, I cringed inside.  Oh how desperately I want to know, to figure it out.  Somehow it seems to me that if I knew why we had to lose our baby, if God would just tell me, I would be able to trust Him better, more willing to submit to His plan.

I've spent more time than I care to admit speculating.  Maybe God allowed this to happen because He wanted me to be able to write about it, to minister to others in a way I wouldn't be able to otherwise.  Maybe I will know God in a way I couldn't have otherwise.

Maybe one or both of those statements are true.  Maybe.  But the truth is that, even if they are, it's not enough.  It's not enough to somehow make our loss okay, to justify the absence of our little baby girl.  It's not enough to make me stop hurting.

So I'm forced to agree.  I will never figure this out. I've tried.  I will probably keep trying.  The appeal of somehow rationalizing the pain away is so strong.  But in the end, I must simply say:  I cannot understand.  I will never understand, not this side of heaven.  But I trust. 

It's a humble place, a hard place for an educated, relatively affluent American like myself.  I don't like it one bit.  I want a God I can understand, control even.  

But even I, who wants so badly to know, can see that a God I can figure out, a God who has to explain Himself to me would not really be God.  I have no choice.  I must worship even when I don't understand, especially when I don't understand.  I must worship the God who's been faithful, the God who I believe is writing my story, the God who will one day wipe away every tear and make all things right.