This group of women became the hands and feet of Jesus to me. I realized I didn’t have to try so hard. I didn’t have to strive. There was nothing for me to do because God had already done all the hard work. My life hadn’t been working because I was trying to do what only Jesus could have done.
Even this week, there have been three gangs of marauding machete-wielding men terrorising our neighbourhood. So we padlock our doors and pray more, and more than anything I’m desperate that my kids don’t get freaked out by the guns
I can truly say, then, that God has been vividly present in my pain. Not that he wants us to suffer, either directly or indirectly. Rather, he is present in our suffering, helping to redeem and transform it.
Hearing my son say, “I killed Kevin and his parents” was at first surreal, but it only took a few moments for the realization to set in that his life and that of our family were going to forever change in ways that I could have never imagined. A father’s first instinct is to protect his children. How could I protect Alec in this situation?
Whilst still married, I have fallen in love with another who pursued me for all that he needed before he then rejected me, and abused power and position to save himself.
I have suffered from depression, and I know the madness that has such power that it convinced me that my children would be better off if I was dead.
I didn’t understand. From age 11 through to age 14 and beyond, I didn’t understand how people who claimed to follow the same God as me could have such a radically different view of His purpose and plan. God stood, distant and cold, behind a dark cloud of resentment, anger, and confusion. And I gave up on Him.
When we lose those we have loved – when they die, or move, or we move, or we break up, or are cut off – there is a loss: an emptiness. Part of ourselves is gone.
I’ve learnt that while God is sometimes silent, He is never absent. He chose to remain silent over our prayers for a child, but He was always present with us—even when we couldn’t feel it. And I’ve learnt that a greater tragedy than a broken dream is a life forever defined by one.
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Tanya Marlow blogs on the Bible, suffering and the messy edges of life [read more]