"Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People?"

This is an age old question.  I don't know a person on this earth who hasn't asked this question out loud or at least thought it to themselves.  This question was posed this last week at a kids camp we were at.  It's an honest question and a lot of people don't have the answer to it.  It's a question that forces itself to the surface, especially when we're suffering and we can't find a "justifiable reason" for it.

Today is our third wedding anniversary.  It's a bittersweet day for me, although each anniversary is better than the last.  The first was celebrated by getting a get-out-of-jail-free card from the nursing home David was residing in and rolling him down the street to a coffee shop, giving him a couple sips of forbidden coffee (because of his swallowing precautions) and sitting in a tiny redwood park for a few minutes while we attempted to have a "conversation" by going through the alphabet and David giving a thumbs up a hundred times.  I had tried to make the day special by wearing the white dress I wore going away from our wedding...but it got soiled moments before we were going to go on our outing by our precious little 2-month old daughter!  Our second anniversary was spent celebrating David's ability to eat normal food and have a bit of a real verbal conversation by having dinner at Red Lobster.  Today we celebrate David's ability to initiate plans for the day without me having to orchestrate everything and the miracle of expecting another baby soon.  Our wedding day was a beautiful day of love and pure joy.  The memories of that day were nothing but good (except for it being 110 degrees and 3 people suffering heat strokes!!).  We pledged our love to each other for better or worse.  The "worse" came sooner than we'd have liked...seven weeks into our blissful life.

I'm learning to love a new man that God has given me.  I've had to learn to love a man that has problems that most people don't imagine having until they are well into their 80's.  I love a man that is becoming a man after God's own heart...David.

Why the suffering, why the emotional roller coaster of these last 3 years to two people that love God?  This is my answer:  Read the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.  They chose death and the curse by sinning against God and disobeying Him by eating the forbidden fruit.  So, in this single act, they ushered sin into this world.  We live in a fallen, accursed world full of suffering, pain, sadness, and discouragement.  But God, in His great mercy has provided an escape, a hope of eternal life.  Sending His only Son to die for us showed the world in one amazing act of love, that He had provided a way of redemption and salvation.  We, born in sin, doomed to death and destruction, have been given the option of eternal life through Christ Jesus.  What hope!

"For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes on His, will not perish but have eternal life." John 3:16

We may have suffering because of judgement from God because we are living unfaithfully or unrighteously but we also may be suffering for the glory of God.  Whatever the purpose, we can be sure that we can trust in a righteous and trustworthy God and that even though this life in the world may not always be rainbows and lollipops,  if we trust in Jesus as Lord and Savior, we have a hope that no suffering in this world can take away.

Hope

My humanness (is that even a word??) gets the best of me sometimes and my heavenly hope that things will be all better in eternity doesn't always satisfy the longing to have life be a bit better now on this earth.  I'm always researching, trying new things that might help David feel better, function better, live like a 31-year old husband and father should.  I saw a quote yesterday that sums up how I feel on most days, "What we need is more people who specialize in the impossible." --Theodore Roethke.  But we have God, and He is enough.  He does all things well.

But God works through people here and now on this earth.  We've been given a boost of hope by a few professionals lately after a dry season of lots of comments and actions that seemed to imply, "Be thankful for what you have but this is about as good as it gets. Live with it."  A series of bladder infections got David a referral to a urologist who has been very kind and has given some hope for improvement by external means to help his spasms.  A friend of David's posted an article about a man with a brain injury.  I bought his book on Kindle and started reading his story and learned about two fascinating doctors in Chicago area.  I decided to check their websites out and then call them to see how legit they were.  I called one of them today and got her on the phone... no receptionist, no annoying phone tree maze, no answering machine...the real deal!!  She was the coolest, most helpful person I've talked to in a long time that actually seemed interested in David improving more.

"Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that ye may abound in hope, through the power of the Holy Ghost." Romans 15:13