For the first time, I truly understand the big questions that hurting people have. I understand why people turn away from God when they’ve been hurt and felt as though God didn’t protect them. I understand why people turn to drugs or other coping mechanisms to lessen the hurt that God doesn’t seem to deliver or remove them from. We don’t like pain because it’s not what we were made for. We were made for a world free from hardship, heartache, and hurt. And an invisible God doesn’t always make sense or seem to deliver on His promises.
He’s good, but why isn’t this situation good? He’s a healer, but He hasn’t healed me from this pain. He says vengeance is His, but when will I see my offender receive vengeance? And for the first time, I can honestly say I do not know. I genuinely do not have the answers to all who are hurting. I honestly don’t understand why God allows pain or why He seemingly delivers some and not others. I’m not always sure why He gives relief in some situations and not others. I truly don’t.
But the only way I’ve found peace amid all the emotional pain I’ve faced is by being honest with God. Letting Him know how much it hurt. Asking Him where He was or why no one protected me. Asking Him why He doesn’t relieve the hurt that always seems to find its way into my heart and my emotions. Letting Him know that I’m angry and frustrated and bitter. Letting Him know that I want revenge and I don’t want to forgive. Letting Him know that I want to be angry for a long time because I’m tired of people invalidating my feelings, brushing past them, or making me feel as though I have no faith because I have real feelings and real pain. Letting Him into every emotion and expressing every hurt. Doing what I need to do to get it out. And after I get what I can out, reminding myself of these words: “Yet will I trust You.”
These words still make me shudder at times because trusting has not been an easy place to get to. I still find myself wrestling with God, wondering why, how, or when? Wondering why an offender seems okay and doing well and why, on the inside, I’m warring and feeling so much. But yet, will I trust Him.
And I’ve only gotten thus far by His help and by knowing so much of His nature, His character, how he moves, responds, thinks, feels, and acts.
One aspect of His nature being that He is compassionate. I love this word because, in Latin, it means “suffer with.” God suffers with us. All of us. Even people across the world who experience harm, hurt, and heartache, He suffers with them too. He suffers with innocent children, abuse victims, sexual violence survivors, the malnourished, the impoverished, those who are homeless, war victims, widows, the grieving, the sick, all of us, all of it. He suffers, too.
One question people always ask is why He would allow these things. Why He doesn’t intervene or put a stop to these things. And all I can say is what He tells us in His word: His thoughts and ways are beyond us (Isaiah 55). We can’t fathom Him, so we opt to leave Him. But when you understand His nature, that there is no maliciousness in Him, it makes it a little easier to put your complete confidence in Him. It may not make the pain go away, or maybe it will in time, but it gives you the escape you’re desperately longing for; peace.
The peace that surpasses understanding, the peace that doesn’t make sense, the peace that exists amid all that is wrong, the peace that doesn’t take the pain away but makes it a little more bearable, the peace that provides relief, the peace that can only be found in Him because it’s not apart from Him.
I wish I had a five-step plan that would make the pain go away, but unfortunately, I don’t. All I can say is that He is the end of suffering and the beginning of goodness. He is the relief. He is the source. He is the healing. He is the peace. He is all of these things because He is all that is good. Truly. And He can’t be anything other than who He is.
Chronicles of a Believer 
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