When victory looks like defeat

This title has rattled around in my head for several weeks now. My last post was titled “Victory is Coming,” and at the time that I wrote it I had great hope in a lot of tough life circumstances. To my great shock, the “victory” I desperately and confidently prayed for came in the form of divisive hurt and unbearable grief. Prayers that I had endlessly prayed + new ones that I never thought I would have to pray seemed to go to a God that had allowed my vision of victory to be crumpled to defeat.

Was all of this somehow supposed to be His victory?

My time with God has been a wrestle with that question. Most days that wrestle has looked like waking up, reaching for my Bible and just crying. Unable to reconcile the sorrow in my heart and the hurt that at times felt like it was by God himself. How could the same God that brings me comfort and love and is endlessly kind and faithful to me, be sovereign over all of the pain? And why is that our faith does not exempt us from experiencing such pain or at least make it less heavy?

I’ve hesitated to post this because I really don’t have any answers to that. In fact, these questions have pushed me to question and just be downright angry at the idea that God is sovereign and that his ways are higher than ours. I still believe and love those truths, but I have also discovered that they can be just as frustrating as reassuring. Pain, death and hurt can make it seem like the God that is loving is also a God that is crushing.

Thankfully, God is not defined by our pain or our emotions that are uncovered within our pain. I am sure that I am still at the beginning of learning what it means to really be faithful, but God has shown me it’s a lot less about knowing what to do or having all the answers or even being willing to say “God is sovereign” when we are hurting. Those are all important and come to play along the story, but the most important lesson I have learned is to let go of what I “should” do or think and to just be honest and present with where I am. For me, learning to be present looked like really investing in biblical counseling, being brave enough to share my honest thoughts and questions with the community around me and being willing to tell God the ugly and hurtful thoughts that were trapped in my heart. As I did this, God kindly and patiently showed me that I was not alone in my questions or hurt. In fact, He himself shared my anger against death and disease and my heart brokenness in discovering the hurt that we can so easily and often cause one another.

I continue to find examples all throughout scripture that point to the reality that life is hard and broken because this is not where or how we were ever meant to live. Our hope and our joy is not found in one another or the beautiful lives we all dream and hope to live. It’s found in God and eternity and all the beautiful and frustrating things that we will never be able to fully define until this life is over. So let me quickly encourage you with the scriptures that have carried me through the past several months.

“The Lord makes firm the steps of the one that delights in him. Though he may stumble, he will not fall, for the Lord upholds him with his hand. I was once young, but now I am old, yet I have never seen the righteous forsaken…” Psalms 37: 23-25

“I remember my affliction and my wandering, the bitterness and the gall. I remember them, and my soul is downcast within me. Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope: Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.”  Lamentations 3:19-23

“Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and earth had ceased to exist, and the sea existed no more…and God himself will be with them. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death will not exist anymore—no mourning, or crying, or pain, for the former things have ceased to exist.”  Revelation 21:1-4

Some days I couldn’t see the joy and comfort in any of the above verses, but I have kept reading and I keep taking my hurt to God and he has shown me that he is still faithful, kind, and true...even when victory looks like defeat.