What do you do when you're a modern day Job?

via Facebook

 

Though he slay me, yet will I hope in Him. - Job 13:15

 I was reading this article about a young woman who was caught in the crossfires of the Aurora, Colorado shooting. If you have a chance, I recommend you read it. It's inspiring, and definitely encourages us to not claim the martyr card when "simple" things are going wrong in our lives.

I was particularly fascinated by certain parts of the article:

• Bonnie Kate wasn't from Aurora. She was passing through with a friend from a ten day vacation in Seattle, Washington.They were returning home to Baton Rogue, Louisiana when they decided to stop at a hotel in Aurora.

• Bonnie Kate wasn't a fan of the Batman movies. The only reason they went to the midnight showing was because the lady at the front desk suggested the midnight showing at a nearby theater.

•  Due to the chaos that the shooting created, she waited in the local ER for three hours before pain medication could even be administered. 

•  Bonnie self-described that the various reconstructive surgeries she's received since the shooting have left her in more pain than the initial shooting.

** 

Bonnie Kate describes the pain she experienced. She doesn't ignore that. And yet, with everything, her response is to praise God. She forgives the shooter whose gruesome acts left her confined to a hospital bed until this past week. 

For so long, I viewed God as someone to protect me from all of the really awful things in life. Sure, I'd heard of other Christians going through hell and back, but somehow, I had this naive view that my life would always be, though wrought with problems, liveable.

The thing that hit me so hard from Bonnie Kate's experience is this:

God not only allowed her to go through pain, suffering, and fear...but he orchestrated events so that Bonnie Kate would be in that theater the night of the shooting. So many things could have gone differently. Perhaps if they'd driven just a little bit further, they would've been in a different hotel in different city. If they'd decided to go to bed early in their hotel room instead of listening to the front desk clerk, Bonnie Katie and her friend would be in Baton Rogue by now, planning other adventures.

Bonnie Kate didn't notice any signals to steer away from the theater. She didn't hear that still, small voice, firmly warning her from going. Quite the opposite. She said in the article:

"I’m not a huge Batman fan, but I thought, oh, it will be fun,” she recounted.

This may be my own opinion, but I believe that if God didn't mean for Bonnie Kate to be in that theater the night of the shooting, He would've given her some warning. We've all felt an internal security alarm go off in our spirits, haven't we? I know I have. Steering away from a person that just "doesn't feel right"; avoiding a place that makes your skin crawl. Those are all signs and signals from our heavenly Father, trying to protect us. In saying that, some would ask "Why didn't God protect Bonnie Kate then?" If you were to ask Bonnie Kate this, I'm sure she would shake her head in disagreement. He did. And He continues to, every day.

“When people say to me ‘Oh, Bonnie Kate, you’re so strong and amazing’, I say ‘I am not strong and amazing but I have a strong and amazing God whose grace I rely upon.’”

**

A painful realization I've come to recently is that God not only knew what I would face, but He allowed my cervix to dilate, my emergency cerclage surgery to fail, and my sweet Carlie Wren to die.

  In Angie's Smith's I Will Carry You, she describes a painful struggle during her pregnancy. She discovered through a routine ultrasound her daughter, Audrey Caroline, had a medical condition which would cause her to die shortly after birth. Angie went through a roller-coaster during this time.They hoped and prayed for a miracle, and right before their eyes, problems they'd encountered in a previous ultrasound were disappearing. Where a stomach and bladder weren't, they suddenly appeared.  Where three chambers around her heart had been, four were now formed. Eventually, the doctor took back that diagnosis, though was cautious about everything. Angie and her husband hoped and prayed for a miracle. They had hundreds of people in agreement with them. However, once her daughter was born... the NICU nurses discovered that Audrey wouldn't live past a few hours. After her child passed, she obtained the results from Audrey's genetic testing... and they found nothing wrong with her child.  Shortly thereafter, she had a friend who was due a few weeks after her. The friend had been diagnosed with the same medical condition as Audrey. However, her son was born screaming. Angie recalls thinking "What a beautiful day for a miracle!" No doubt the boy's family felt that everything had been a misdiagnosis, as the infant's lungs weren't even supposed to be developed, according to modern science. 

The boy died an hour after he was born. 

In all three cases, we had faith that everything would be fine. That God would allow our children to live. This didn't happen. We had families believing with us that everything would be fine. I had so many people tell me they "just knew" that Carlie would pull through. In some small way, {though hoping in the Lord renews strength}, we experienced more pain through hoping than we would have through accepting the doom and gloom the doctors were forecasting. The fact that our miracle wasn't granted felt like a cold, callous slap in the face.The world would say we were made to look like fools. "Look at your God now! Where is He? How can you believe in a god that abandons you when you believe He will give you a miracle?" 

**

 People say "God is weeping with you." Yes, He is. Just like Jesus wept over Lazarus, seeing the pain of Mary, Martha, and all of his friends. Jesus knew He was going to heal Lazarus, but He still wept. Why? Because we have a heavenly father that empathizes with our pain. However, this wasn't a surprise to Him.  He saw Carlie running to His arms long before I even knew I was pregnant. That is a difficult, bitter pill to swallow. I have the temptation day after day to ask why me? Some days, I give in. Other days, I remember how God brought me through each and every step in that painful journey, shortly before we found out Carlie died. Do I think this all happened because it's a horrifying result of our fallen world? Yes and no. Of course, if sin hadn't entered the world, I wouldn't know this pain, or any pain. 

However, God is a God of living and breathing miracles. If He'd willed it, Carlie Wren would've been another miracle to glorify God with. We begged Him for it. We wept for His presence, for Him to reverse all that happened. We claimed our Psalm 118:17 life verse over her, believing she'd pull through. We pleaded that my amniotic fluid would be restored, that Carlie's feet would tuck back up into my womb, that somehow, against all odds, we would be spared from the pain that loomed above us. And yet, like Bonnie Kate, we weren't. Carlie died, and it left a gaping, bloody hole in my heart. I had dozens of Facebook messages encouraging us during our hospital stay. Many people explained how they'd heard from another friend that their daughter/son was born at 21 weeks, and lived. We were given hope that never came. We held onto our faith, white-knuckled, and despite all of this... we weren't given our miracle. 

I'm never going to understand this side of heaven the exact reason for why my baby girl never saw the light of day. I also know that I had to come to a personal journey of acceptance to understand what I've written above. I don't think it's ever a wise decision to comfort a person in the midst of grieving that "This is God's will." Though deep down the griever may know it, that statement doesn't comfort in a time of immense, raw pain.

 Scripture promises me that HE works all things together for good. Just as Bonnie Kate has a platform to minister to thousands of people through her testimony, so will we. 

"If you're praying for a miracle, and God doesn't give you the miracle, you WILL be the miracle for someone else." -Nick Vujicic