When my world came to a crashing halt, the first thing that spit out of my mouth was a desperate, “WHY?” I could feel every drop of blood racing through my body. I was immediately sick to my stomach and it was more like my body was reacting and asking “Why?” more than my brain actually was. It’s like the weight of my circumstances hadn’t completely processed in my brain, but my body definitely felt the panic of the situation and reacted with a full body thrust, clenching of the fists, and an exasperated scream of demanding an answer to this unfairness.
Then when my brain was actually able to start processing, so many more questions raced around.
Why would God allow this? Why do I deserve this? What did I do to be punished in this way? Is God mad at me?
Then I felt guilty. I shouldn’t question God. Right? Is it wrong to ask God “Why?”
But as I studied Job’s story more, I see that one of first things Job did when he started talking to his friends was question things.
“Why is light given to him who in misery,
And life to the bitter of soul,
Who long for death, but it does not come,
And search for it more than hidden treasures;
Who rejoice exceedingly,
And are glad when they can find the grave?
Why is light given to a man whose way is hidden,
And whom God has hedged in?”
-Job 3:20-23
I feel the weight of those words. Job went through unimaginable trials and was considered faithful in God’s eyes. Yet, he threw a ton of questions at God. He didn’t question God’s character or curse God, but he did question why these things were happening to him.
(To read more of Job’s story, I discuss his story in more depth in Is God a God of Restoration? Job also has entire book dedicated to him in the Bible.)
Jesus, who was perfect, also asked God a “Why?” question. He was recorded in Matthew 27:46 and in Mark 15:34 saying, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
Asking God why is a normal reaction to chaos in our lives. We’re trying to understand.
Consider a young child when they are discovering the world. They are constantly asking their parents, “Why?” when they see or hear things they don’t understand. They’re not doing anything wrong; they’re just trying to understand and learn. And we can do the same as God’s children.
When we’re struck with deep pain, we immediately try to make sense of it. Why is this happening? How did this happen? Can I stop it? Could I have prevented it? It’s how we as humans deal with things.
Things have to make sense to us in order for us to process them or accept them as truth.
And if you have faith in God, you typically will direct those questions to Him.
As humans we tend to think that knowledge and understanding will bring us comfort. I’ll let you in on a little secret that I discovered during my journey; knowledge and understanding does not bring comfort. Sometimes knowing actually makes things worse. Too many times I started digging for answers, thinking they would bring me comfort. But often times what I would find would make me feel so much worse about my situation.
I think a lot of times God is trying to protect us from knowing certain things because He knows that that knowledge will actually hurt us. But within our desire to control things and seek answers, we uncover things we weren’t meant to know. Not because God is cruel and wants to hide things from us, but because He doesn’t want us to be hurt by them.
Some things are supposed to be just for God to know because He is the only one strong enough to fully handle them.
We have a God who is so big and able to do things way past what our human brains can even fathom. So if we tried to understand all that He does and why, we would completely fall short. He is our protector.
I spent so much time analyzing my situation and trying to figure out what was happening and how specific details came to play in my circumstances. Then assuming I figured out how God was working, I’d make suggestions to God and would mentally map out the end result. “God? Are you sure? I really think I could help You out here. There’s a much faster, smoother route this way. Also, have you considered doing this? I think this would make all of us much happier. It would just go much better.”
Because, you know, God clearly needs tips from broken hearted Shannon over here. It’s not like I’m reacting emotionally or anything. I mean, obviously I’m in a state of mind to be giving God, the Creator of the universe, suggestions on how my life should go. Right? No.
God doesn’t need our suggestions. But I think we all tend to do that. Especially those of us with control issues. I wish I could say that I wasn’t a control freak, but I’m sure everyone close to me would call me out. I am. I’m the biggest freak out there.
When planning a vacation, there are two types of people. There’s the person who plans everything to the minute. They know where you’ll be at what time and what activity you’ll be partaking in.
And then there are the relaxed vacationers. They pick a destination and then have the attitude of, “We’ll figure out what we want to do when we get there and decide what we feel up to doing.” I find these are the people who are able to enjoy their vacation so much more because when a bump in the road comes, it doesn’t derail the whole trip. It doesn’t mess up the rest of their vacation or schedule. They don’t see it as a huge inconvenience, but rather just another part of their adventure.
We tend to live our lives in the same way. Oddly, I’m a relaxed vacationer when I’m on vacation, but a major control freak and planner with the rest of my life. I’ve had my whole life planned out perfectly for years. It was the ideal vision of a happy, content-filled life. I’ve set up everything around these specific plans.
But everything I had planned and envisioned for my life was stripped away from me in one gut-wrenching moment.
I’m now on vacation, which feels nothing like vacation, with no itinerary and no map.
Being that control freak, I feel like I have to figure out how to sort my life back out and get it back on track. Panic comes over me and the only thing I can now control is trying to figure out how God is working.
The problem with trying to figure out why things are happening or how God is working in a situation, is when something that didn’t seem to line up with what I had thought I had figured out would happen, it would send me to another pit of confusion.
I started journaling when things in my life really felt like they were falling apart. It was a way for me to process and talk with God. But if you go back and look at my first few journal entries, you can see how I was responding to my circumstances. I was trying to figure them out. I would analyze detail after detail trying to discover what lesson God was trying to teach me.
Because there must be a lesson. Right? I must be doing something wrong and God is just trying to get me back on track. That’s constantly where my head was at.
But friend, there isn’t always a lesson. (I can just hear backrow Baptist ladies gasp at that fact that I just said that.) Sometimes we are just walking through hard things because of the repercussions of sin. You might have to stop trying to figure out what you’re supposed to learn in this season or how God is working. Because you’re never actually going to figure it all out. We’re not supposed to. We’re not God and we aren’t designed to be Him or have all His knowledge.
Don’t read that last section with only one lens. I’m not saying there isn’t something here for you to learn. I do believe that we can learn and grow from hard circumstances, and we should be using these situations to grow. But I no longer believe that every hardship in my life is happening to me for the sole purpose of teaching me a lesson. In some instances, yes. But not always.
Sometimes chaos just invades our lives simply because life is just hard and not fair. I’m so sorry. I really am. You probably came here looking for answers to some of your questions about why this chaos in your life had to happen and I’m basically telling you that there isn’t always a basic answer. I hate putting those words out there for you to read especially without the opportunity to give you a big hug after. My ideal situation would be to be able to sit with you, hold you and say, “I don’t know why this is happening to you. It’s not fair. Life is so hard and I wish you didn’t have to walk through this.”
I wish life didn’t have to be this way. I wish we didn’t have to walk through such deep, dark pain and I don’t blame you for desperately searching in your situation trying to find ways to fix it or heal from it. That’s a normal human response.
I obsessed over everything I said and did to David in those first few months, and sometimes I still do. I kept thinking that maybe my actions or my love, grace, and forgiveness would turn him around. Or maybe this one thing I said would finally make him have a change of heart. I obsessed over it so much that it was becoming unhealthy. I prayed over every word I said to David and most days just felt paralyzed with the thought of saying something wrong. I terrorized myself with the thought that I could mess everything up if I don’t say everything David needs to hear. Or what if I say the wrong thing and it turns him farther away from me?
The amount of stress I was putting on myself was almost unbearable. During that time, I wrote this in my journal:
I have no clue what to do. I don’t know how to treat my husband. Back off for a bit or push in? I’m terrified that I’ll make the wrong decision, so here I stand stuck in the middle. My feet feel like they’re stuck in thick mud from the weight of not knowing what my next step should be. I can’t move. I don’t want to do the wrong thing and push him away farther. So, I stand here and pray. Pray my husband will come back to me and pray that God will guide my feet in the right direction.
Every ounce of me wants to fight. To move out of this mud and fix this situation. I’m not good at sitting or waiting. I want to have some sort of control. I know God is the One that needs to be in control, but I so desperately want to be doing my part. I have to just trust God, trust David, and use the most powerful tool I have while I sit in this mud- prayer.
But one day while I was journaling and talking to God, it’s like He whispered softly to me, “Shannon, do you hold more power than Me? Do you really think you have so much control in this situation that your actions alone will result in David staying or leaving?” That truth swept a peace inside of me that released the stress I had been holding onto. I alone couldn’t fix this situation and I needed to learn how to hand it all over to God and let Him work in it.
And if I did mess up and say something wrong, I needed to realize that if I’m truly trying my best to do the right things, there isn’t anything I can say or do that will be so severe that God couldn’t fix it. However, that’s not to say that I could just do or say anything. Of course there were things that if I reacted out of my emotions, then I could mess things up for a potential future with David. But I was doing my best to not allow my emotions to dictate what I said to David.
It reminded me of another time that God had taught me that lesson. I was preparing for my first date with David, and I was really nervous. Possibly the most nervous I’ve ever been. My brother had sort of set us up and David and I had talked for a couple weeks before deciding to meet.
I was so worried that he wouldn’t like me. For days I envisioned how I should act and what I should say, thinking of things that might impress him or make him think I’m sort of cool. I got myself so worked up in nerves that I considered cancelling. But I decided to spend time with God so He could calm me and prepare me.
I looked up faith-based blogs and studied scripture until I found a few notes I could write down and focus on to ease my nerves. At the top of the page I wrote,
“Put the pressure on God, not yourself.”
Those few words stuck out to me more than any else. Reading them I thought, I need to just be myself. If it’s meant to be, David will like me. If not, then that’s okay. That just means he’s not the one God has intended for me and I’m confident He’ll bring me someone else. That simple phrase took the pressure off of me making myself someone David might’ve liked and allowed God to just work in us.
I saved those notes for many years and pulled them back out when I was struggling with feeling stuck in the mud. Put the pressure on God. Such a good reminder and something that held so true even in this situation.
I couldn’t fix this, yet I was putting so much pressure on myself as if I was the one fully responsible for fixing it.
Why do we always want to have so much control in our lives? Why do we want that kind of pressure? Allowing God to take the reigns in our lives removes the need to feel so much pressure to take every step correctly and frees us from feeling the need to be perfect.
We need to allow God to be in control of the chaos in our life. He always has the answers, but they’re not always there for us to know. That’s where faith and trust in Him comes to play. If we knew everything, then we wouldn’t need to put our faith in Him.
We might not always discover why things happen in our lives and we just have to learn to trust that God knows why and He has a plan to redeem us and make things work for our good. Don’t be afraid to ask God those hard questions. He can handle it. Just make sure you also take the time to listen for the answers.
God wants good things for you and me and we have to try our best to release control and give it over to Him. Trust me, it’s easier said than done. But I guarantee that once you learn to let go and give it to God, you will experience a peace from Him like no other.
It’s okay to not understand why certain things are happening in our lives and it’s okay to wonder how God is working in your life. But manipulating the situation and obsessing over discovering what God is trying to do is actually a form of control. But I get it. In our pain and desperation to understand, we cling to the only thing we can control and that is to seek a reason.
We’re often being told that everything happens for a reason. And searching for that reason seems to bring us comfort. But we don’t have to discover the reason. We don’t have to be in control. We have a God who does that for us. He is an all-powerful God who can do anything. Yet for some reason we feel like we would have more comfort being the one in control of everything in our life rather than allowing Him to do it.
God is comfort. God is in control. He wants good for you. He hates seeing you in pain. Release the pressure off yourself to try and figure it all out. God already knows what will happen. He knows how this will all end up. The more you trust in Him, the more you are opening yourself up to experience His peace, His healing plan, and His redemption for you.
