“God is too good to be unkind and He is too wise to be mistaken. And when we cannot trace His hand, we must trust His heart.”[i]
Charles Spurgeon
A few weeks after our lunch that spring day in 2017, Russell called and I instantly knew something was wrong. He was crying as he asked me to come to the hospital to dedicate his daughter to the Lord. I put on my purple and pink “Team Adalyn” shirt and drove to Ann Arbor. Though I’ve worn a few team jerseys in my life, none of them have meant as much to me as that purple shirt that I still treasure. As I gathered with family, friends, a mom, and a dad around a beautiful little girl, I couldn’t hold back my tears. Truthfully, I can’t remember what I said.
A short time later, she was gone. On May 18, 2017, Adalyn went to Heaven. We prayed and knew the best medical team around had done everything in their power to save her life.
The very next day, a precious man in our church was killed in a tractor accident. When I got that call, I could barely catch my breath. The weight of these two devastating deaths crushed me. I vividly recall sitting on a small hill near my driveway and weeping. I cried out to God. I was hurting, but I knew that people I loved were hurting so much more. As a pastor, I have felt pain for my dear flock and they have, at times, felt the deep hurt of their shepherd. The Apostle Paul writes, “If one member suffers, all suffer together” (1 Corinthians 12:26).
The man who was killed in the farm accident was an important man. In my mind and in my plan, he was absolutely necessary. I had met him four years earlier when his 38-year-old son, Raymond, had died from cancer. During that funeral, Raymond’s two-year-old son, just being a toddler, escaped his caregiver and raced into the service. He ran down the aisle and attempted to pull himself up at the casket. The room froze in horror. He called out, “Daddy! Daddy!” Only by the grace of God, I calmly walked over and lifted him up. We talked about his dad. For the next few minutes, I held him while I continued preaching. It’s a moment in my life that I will never forget.
Now four years later, God had taken his grandfather. How could this be good for that little boy? I wanted to give God a lecture on how this was a terrible plan. This wasn’t fair. I drove to his grandmother’s house, where the smell of a roast cooking filled the room. During our visit, Sue realized her husband Sonny would never be coming home to eat it.
On May 23, 2017, I did Adalyn’s funeral. My wife Jennifer came and met Heather, Adalyn’s Mom, for the first time. My wife unleashed her mama-bear. She cared for and fiercely protected Heather. I’ll never forget traveling to a cemetery near where I grew up for the burial. The casket and the vault were so small. They shouldn’t have to make those things that small – ever. Jen and I still talk about how hard it was for Heather and Russell to walk away from that grave.
The next year, God blessed my friends with another daughter. Imagine if Cindy-Lou Who were to step out of the pages of Dr. Suess. That’s this girl. Instead of calling me Mr. Josh or Pastor Josh, she mashes them together and calls me Master Josh. Like her sister, she melts my heart.
A couple of years after that, they were expecting another daughter, but this would be where my faith would run into a brick wall. The day before Heather was to be induced, the baby died. Jen and I drove to the same hospital in Ann Arbor, Michigan. I was angry, confused, and felt totally helpless.
It was the summer of 2020. COVID-19 had overtaken the world. We masked up and went into the room. Even writing this, I have a hard time reliving those moments. The cruelty was that Heather would still have to deliver, but joy wouldn’t follow. I was so overcome by emotion, I couldn’t even speak. My wife, Jennifer, prayed. She boldly asked God to raise that sweet baby from the dead. She told God that we wanted to celebrate this child and not mourn her loss. We were pleading with God to do the miraculous, but He didn’t.
A few days later on one of the hottest days of the year (it was 94 degrees when we started), Jennifer and I stood in that same cemetery we were in three years earlier. This time, I was left with little to say. What do you say to a father and mother who have lost two daughters? According to doctors, they had hit the genetic lottery twice. I was looking at the same grief-stricken faces. Nobody said it out loud, but in my own heart I heard the questions, “What now preacher? Where is God? Why did God let this happen again?”
I opened my Bible to the story of Jacob in Genesis 32:22-32. It is a story of an Old Testament saint and scoundrel literally wrestling with God all night. The story is strange, but it was what I felt like God was telling me to say. I encouraged my friends, actually I begged them, to keep wrestling with God through the darkness of their grief. I prayed they would hold on to Jesus even when things didn’t make sense. I pray the same thing for you.
In the Gospel of Mark, a father in crisis cries out to Jesus, “I believe; help my unbelief” (Mark 9:24). He was confused andconfident. He was hopeless and hopeful. It’s hard to understand how both faith and unbelief can exist in the same heart at the same time. But that’s the nature of our broken hearts and that is what we bring to God. The Apostle Peter encourages us to cast all of our fears and anxieties on Jesus, “because he cares for you” (1 Peter 5:7). “If you need wisdom,” James writes, “ask our generous God, and he will give it to you. He will not rebuke you for asking” (James 1:5, NLT). We bring our hurt to the healer. We bring our confusion to the source of all wisdom. We bring our questions to the Answer. When life doesn’t make sense, we can be certain of the four unchanging truths.