Editor’s Note: This article is the second in a series entitled When We Don’t Understand. These posts provide truths to hold onto as we grapple with life’s unanswered questions.
I do not do well with unexplained things, especially when those things are happening to me. I find it much easier to accept the sovereignty of God over things that happen “out there” without apparent explanation, but it takes approximately thirty seconds of personal trial before I’m asking myself, “Okay, but what is this for?” I have this habitual delusion that if I just knew why something was happening, it would be easier to endure. Even if the explanation was harsh, there would still be a measure of comfort in knowing that the explanation exists. Even if the knowledge wouldn’t change anything, there would be some kind of anchor or logic behind it all that would make it feel less confounding.
So you might imagine how well a diagnosis of “unexplained infertility” landed on me after weeks of tests meant to explain why several years of trying had resulted in exactly zero pregnancies.
In the three years since I received that shrug-emoji of a medical diagnosis, my conception count has remained decisively at zero. The “unexplained” has threatened to pick away at my sanity and peace bit by heart-sickening bit, and all manner of disillusioning questions and doubts try to fill up the explanation-shaped hole in my understanding. Questions about the promises of God and how true they really are. Doubt about the kindness of God and the plans he has for me. Weariness as I wonder if this is just a season of waiting, or a hope that will be deferred for the rest of my life.
So where does this leave me as I continue in a season that holds innumerable questions and very few answers? I don’t have insights or explanations for why the Lord grew a desire for motherhood in my heart only to seemingly withhold it from me. I do have many truths that the Lord is using this challenging season to press into my heart as he helps me to walk (stumble, crawl) in light of his truth, and not in light of my circumstances. Here are a few that are shaping me most profoundly.
- I’m not called to understand, I’m called to trust (Proverbs 3:5–8).
There is no peace, joy, or hope to be found in my own understanding of what the Lord is doing and why. Christ perfectly understood what God was doing when he called him to offer himself as a perfect sacrifice for our sins. It did not make it easier. He still asked for the cup to pass from him in the garden. But he trusted in his father, and endured the cross for the joy set before him. Christ’s endurance through severe, blood-sweating distress dismantles my idol of omniscience, and empowers me to trust in the Lord even through circumstances I would not choose for myself.
- As I walk with him, he will withhold no good thing from me (Psalm 84:11).
There is a unique disillusionment of wanting a good thing and not getting it, but if I trust in the Lord with all my heart, I must trust in his definition of what is good, not my own understanding. Looking again at the Garden of Gethsemane, even knowing the full plan of God for salvation, Christ still made his request known but trusted that if it were good for that request to be granted, it would not be withheld from him. Christ’s humble requests inspire me to keep bringing my hopes before the Lord with confidence that he is not carelessly dashing them when they go unfulfilled but is working all things in my life for his glory and my good.
- There is nothing I am suffering now that is worth comparing to the glory that awaits me (Romans 8:18).
I see in part and I know in part, but when I see in full, there will be no lingering disappointments or bitternesses that will carry into eternity. For the joy that was set before him, Christ suffered the cross and is now glorified, seated at the right hand of the father. Christ’s suffering has won a glorious future for me, and there is no uncertainty or question about whether I will get to have this. As surely as Christ died and was raised and is now seated at the right hand of God, so too will I be glorified along with him as his blood-bought child.
This is the hope for which I was saved. For which I can endure. For which I can say that goodness and mercy have followed me and will follow me, no matter the outcome of my present circumstances, all the days of my life.
