“In reality one mourns forever. The loss of a loved one 'can't be got over'; You learn to live with it. One heals and builds one's new life around the loss suffered. One is whole again, but never the same again. You shouldn't be the same anymore, and you don't want to be.” – Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

I still remember that morning looking into Penny's eyes. I don't remember how long ago the accident happened, but I'm sure many months had passed, maybe even more than a year. We sat at the breakfast table and got used to being alone. Penny was cooking again. We ate, I think, some delicious toast with jam. As I put the bread to my mouth, something happened that literally dawned a new day. Its first splendor was just pushing over the horizon. It was the words that brought us out of the darkness into the light as Penny said:

"Only two people died that day."

We looked at each other. That was true. Not the exact number. That was obvious. No, the deeper meaning.

The force of the accident would have been enough to kill all four of us. When our used car without airbags rolled over at 1994 km/h back in 100, it should have meant the end of all of us. Still, I wasn't even hurt, and Penny escaped death and possible brain damage so she could keep fighting and living.

From why to acceptance

Why? This little word had tormented us for months. But now it invited us to ask: Why are we still alive? What or who intervened? Was it possible that there was a purpose to our continued existence? As we gazed at each other, and the weight of the words dropped, we moved cautiously toward the unreal place that bears the name "Acceptance."

In the days that followed, we kept thinking and looking for answers. We looked back over the past few months, reflecting on the darkness, the pain, and the memory loss. Before we realized the truth of the words Penny had just spoken, we had often felt guilty when we had to laugh - had stopped making long-term plans. Our dreams were still dominated by the death of our children, both day and night. We hadn't really begun to live again, but existed as an empty shell from which our old identity had shrunk.

But Penny's words pushed us forward.

We hadn't died. So it had to be okay that we were still alive. For some reason we had been left alive. That's why we were allowed to live again. We suddenly realized that it was okay to laugh, dream, hope without being paralyzed by guilt or feeling like traitors. It felt like we were slowly waking up, rubbing our sleepy eyes and realizing that there was a deep meaning to our survival.

A future awaited us!

Not coincidence, but love

As we continued to reflect on the previous dark months, we connected the dots of love that our friends had shown us. Inexplicable moments of happiness suddenly resulted in a beautiful pattern that we couldn't just dismiss. Things that others call coincidence happened more and more often, until we realized that they weren't coincidence at all, but somehow coordinated down to the last detail. Memories awoke. Suddenly a finely crafted handicraft stood in front of us. Something or someone that couldn't be a coincidence. Slowly but surely rose from the ashes the revelation of a God at work above the chaos. Soon she would shine high in the sky in all her glory.

How can a loving God allow so much suffering?

God was not unknown to us. We even had a personal relationship with him. But when our children died just after I had preached a sermon on faith and asked for protection on the drive home, our perception of God was radically challenged! In the storm of our anger, God too became a victim of this terrible calamity. Our image of God was in pieces. What kind of god could allow something so terrible?

I could still hear the echoes of my calls to God deep in my heart. The question that had pierced my heart rang: How could a good God allow such a thing? I didn't have an easy answer to that. There is no easy answer either. Nonetheless, there was an insistent voice inside me, begging me to get to the bottom of it again. In the midst of all my questions, I began to realize that there had to be a larger context.

Everyone has an image of God. Depending on how you grew up, you believe in one, many or no god at all (monotheism, polytheism, atheism). In a way, polytheistic religions find it easier to explain why evil and suffering exist. Atheists can even dispense with the explanation altogether. But the major monotheistic, Abrahamic religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, as well as a few smaller denominations, cannot simply blame "evil" on another deity or attribute it all to chance. These monotheistic religions are forced to struggle for a coherent answer to the darkness.

Personally, we all have a certain image of God and we either live in accordance with that image or we rebel against it. In my life I had integrated a serious mistake into my image of God. For some reason I had misunderstood something. If the accident hadn't happened I probably wouldn't have noticed because I didn't know any better. Despite my sincerity, my perception of God was distorted, and it wasn't until the death of my children that this became apparent.

When we're at the end of our rope

I mistakenly thought that my relationship with God was based on what I felt for Him tat. I studied my Bible and memorized it; I prayed and worshiped; I preached and witnessed; I did all the right things and avoided the wrong things. What was it all about? In many ways my faith was based on what I tat. As long as I did more than others, I was in good spirits and felt loved. Judging others and comparing myself to them were my two pillars of faith. My self-worth before God (and before men) was based on my own achievement. Before the accident, I thought I was actually doing really well.

Then my children died right before my eyes.

For the first few months after the accident, as I faced the storm of grief, nothing I used to do worked anymore. In my anger I cried out at God at times, unable to do any worship. In the middle of the depression I didn't want to read anything, neither happy texts nor any other texts! I just wanted to die.

Once I was sincerely trying to get my faith back on track and read my friend Dwight Nelson's good book titled A New Way to Pray. In it, he teaches readers how to use words from the Bible in prayer and in this way allow themselves to be touched by the Word of God. A great thought and sure to be a blessing to many people! But when I tried, Bible language kept evoking the opposite of what I wanted. I misunderstood the not infrequently used word "awful". When I read a person in the Bible speaking about the "awful" acts of God ("awesome" in the sense of "great" and "mighty"), I seethed with anger. I yelled at God, "Yes, God! You've done some pretty horrible things to me too! You let my children die before my eyes, my wife is now disabled and I am desperate to escape alive! Oh yes, yes! Terrible deeds! Exactly! Many thanks, dear God!!! Direct your destructiveness onto someone else!' To some, in a world of swear words and swear words, that doesn't sound like an outburst. But I had never been one to curse. Biting sarcasm that pierced my opponent's flesh was my weapon of choice. Yes, I was furious. I threw the Bible away and had no meaningful communication with or about God for months.

I stopped preaching and trying to reach others with the gospel. At that point there was nothing more gaining in any area of ​​my life anyway. I was nothing but a man who alternately suffered from anger and depression and repeatedly inflicted wounds on one another with his wife.

Penny and I argued a lot. Although we consciously tried to invest in our marriage because we had declared all-out war on the specter of divorce, there often seemed to be more between us than outside of us. I felt like she needed my help to grieve. I needed hers too. But we both grieved differently, and trying to give the other what they thought they needed often led to arguments. We often retreated to the opposite corner of the house in anger and despair, completely unsettled by the words we had thrown at each other. Added to the pain of the impatient and angry words was the torment of the paradoxical loneliness of hurting or being hurt by the person who knows and loves you best.

When my faith fails

Then I tried again to be a man of faith and find meaning in the pain. That's why I wanted to pray. Because I needed help. But when I closed my eyes and prayed, I often had a flashback. The pain, the fear, the failure attacked me until I sat in the corner shaking uncontrollably. That's when I stopped praying. I know if others had flashbacks like this, they would stop praying too. So I must have lost my faith, I decided.

Some time later I told our minister that I must have lost my faith. I just said, "Frank, I guess I'm not a believer anymore because... I can't do anything I used to do." He listened and asked me to elaborate. I said I couldn't do anything with God anymore and couldn't do anything for him anymore. Everything I've done before is powerless. Also, I am angry with God for my fate. How could God let my dear children die like that? Then he said something I will never forget.

Let God love you

He looked me straight in the eye, paused, and spoke these words into my life: “Bryan, it's not what you do for God that builds your relationship; but what God does for you! Right now you are hurt and can't do anything. Let God embrace you and love you in your hurt!” He further explained that our great God, the Creator of all people in all walks of life, woos us with all his heart. We don't choose him. He has already chosen us!

Astonishing. Anyone who belongs to any faith community has heard these words many times. But we seem to take a piece of it and fit it into our false image of God - just like me. I still derived my worth from who I was instead of who God is. A gigantic difference!

Perhaps this part of my story could be titled "Confession of a Pharisee," because God literally had to break me in two to see that. That afternoon, Frank helped me see the amazing love of God in the midst of my absolute disability. That changed me. Rays of light fell into my darkness.

I suddenly saw the God of Abraham as a God who loves deeply, tenaciously, and fully, who courts me and orchestrates events that set me free. One verse in particular took on a whole new meaning for me. In Jeremiah 31,3:XNUMX, after a terrible time of judgment and brokenness, God tells the people, “I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have drawn you to me out of sheer mercy."

Inconceivably! I had had the impression that I had to bring God to others or confront them with a theological belief before God could love and save them. But no! That day I realized for the first time that God makes the first step, that he acts first. We don't choose him. He has already chosen us! Like a tractor beam from Star Trek, the god of the universe is literally pulling us towards him. An amazing thought!

After talking to Frank, I told Penny about my newfound revelation. We wondered what that meant. A new perspective on God emerged. Could it really be true?

The parable of two fathers

I like to compare our radically new realization to a small child running to his father, fully aware of where his child was and watching carefully. Suddenly the child falls onto the unforgiving asphalt, badly scraping his knees, hands and head. It bleeds, has deep wounds, great pain, and roars. The father quickly runs to him, carefully picks him up, holds him tight and treats his wounds, yes, more importantly, his child. He speaks comforting and encouraging, but not condemning words. Time seems to stand still while his love surrounds the suffering child.

Most of us can imagine this scene because we know that parents almost always genuinely care about their children's well-being. But I had a distorted image of God. I couldn't get that perspective. For some reason I had a different image of God.

Imagine a father watching from afar, judging the little boy's performance as he struggles to earn his praise, all the while speeding up. The inexperienced feet stumble on a bump and the little runner falls to the ground. The boy screams in pain, but the father stays where he is and yells at his son: Get up and keep running! Be careful not to fall again and run faster - faster!

What a contrast. Frank invited us to see God as the first father, not the second! But my image of him was more like the second father. Now with our deep emotional wounds, Penny and I couldn't run. We had nothing to give and nothing more to prove. We were finished. Was it possible for God to hold us in our pain and give us time to heal? The words echoed: "Let God love you!" Sure, eventually there might be a time to run again, but it would be a long time yet. The reason for the race would also be different. We no longer had to prove our worth to anyone because of this amazing love.

The healing has begun

This new element of God's grace and love flowed into our broken hearts and gradually brought healing. It wasn't spontaneous healing. She matured for months. But we learned how to let God love us. We no longer thought we had to do something to be accepted by him. We just let ourselves be loved for who we were, even in our brokenness. It was okay that everything hurt and he hugged us lovingly. As we believed those words, we kept an eye out for more messages of that undeserved love and acceptance.

Again we opened our broken hearts to the encouraging words of the Bible. Reports of trust and miracles performed gave us more and more hope. Forgiveness and patience, with which God has met man throughout history, made us realize that grace and mercy affect us longer than we could have imagined. A new image of God emerged.

In the warm, loving embrace, the inflamed, aching sores formed a crust and dried up. As God's love was poured out into our hearts, we became more patient with one another. The explosive rage melted away. As the fog of depression began to lift, we could begin to see much further ahead than we could have months ago. So, because we had allowed God to love us, we sat at the breakfast table that morning staring at each other and had the monumental epiphany that only two people had died in the accident that day. This statement triggered a paradigm shift in our world. What did that mean?

Was it possible that the loving God had spared us because he still wanted to carry out a plan with us? Was it possible that He wanted us to feel His love in a way we didn't even know we needed? Could it be that, by and large, Caleb and Abigail were only missing out on pain and sickness? Was it possible that after the resurrection of the dead (as taught by the books of the Abrahamic religions) they would grow up in a place where love reigns over sin? What did this amazing god have in store for Penny and me now, if all of this was true?

As we pondered these questions, small ideas began to sprout like seeds of hope in our broken heart furrows, hungrily drinking the water of all the tears of the past few months. Now they could grow into a crop of hope. Winter was over, spring had come.

The sun truly rose with healing under its wings, inviting us to the adventures of the days to come in our lives.

continuation             Part 1 of the series             In English

From: Bryan C. Gallant, Undeniable, An Epic Journey Through Pain, 2015, pages 94-103

---