Precious in God’s Sight
In the wake of my husband's death, some of the hardest things to hear were other people’s explanations for why God allowed him to die. At times, it seemed as if his death was a mystery being solved by a well-meaning committee determined to find a “rainbow” at the end of my “storm”.
Their ideas varied as much as their perspectives on my life: he died because it was his time; because he had suffered too much and couldn’t handle more; because God knew I was strong and could entrust suffering to me; because God knew I couldn’t handle more caregiving and was sparing me of pain. Each explanation was intended to give comfort but only left me feeling worse. In my head, I argued with every reason they gave: but he had so much life to live; he could surely endure more to be here with us; I’m not strong; I’d take him back in a heartbeat!
As time passed and my son and I began to experience goodness in life again, the “well-meaning committee” found new reasons to explain my husband’s death. When something positive happened (especially something his ongoing battle with heart failure would’ve precluded), they drew a precarious line from my husband’s death to the event and triumphantly announced that the search was over: they finally had a good reason for my husband’s death.”Look at what you’ve been able to do since he died!”, they rejoiced. Their words seemed to imply that it was time for me to move from lament to acceptance, and dare they even say… joy.
These well-meaning people couldn’t understand that there was no possible explanation or blessing that could make me glad that my husband and the father of my child had died at the age of 35.
I am no stranger to the desire to find a reason that will ease the pain of loss. I’ve examined every possible cause, searching for some reality in which his death would come untrue. I’ve agonized over medical decisions, recounted conversations with doctors, scrutinized our choices, and held my child as he cried in anger and frustration that God let his daddy die.
No matter how much I begged God to help me understand, an explanation never came. Finally, more than a year after my husband’s death, my counselor gently asked if there was any reason for his death that would satisfy me. I realized that no, there isn't. Not on this side of eternity.
In his New Morning Mercies devotional, Paul David Tripp writes:
“You and I will never find inner peace and rest by trying to figure it all out. Peace is found in resting in the wisdom and grace of the One who has it all figured out and rules all for his glory and our good...Yes, he will ask you to do hard things and he will bring difficult things your way, but he is worthy of your trust and he loves you dearly. Today your heavenly Father reaches down to you and says, “I know you don’t understand all that you face, but remember, I love you. Trust me and you will find peace that can be found no other way.”
I thought I’d learned this lesson during the tumultuous years of illness that preceded my husband’s death but I found myself having to learn it all over again in grief. Trying to find answers for the pain that God allowed into my life has never once brought me peace. God has not seen fit to give me the answers I seek. My guess is that He hasn’t given them to you either.
Sometimes I wonder if we could even begin to comprehend the answers to our suffering if He did provide them. Maybe the answers are too complex for us to ever fully understand. Maybe the deaths of our husbands are part of an intricately woven story consisting of thousands of threads that affect thousands of lives. Maybe their deaths have less to do with us experiencing a “rainbow” on the other side of loss and more to do with the story of redemption that God has written for our world. Maybe the story God wrote for each precious life before He spoke the world into existence is far too complex, interwoven and beautiful for any of us to comprehend this side of Heaven.
When people try to answer the “why” question for God, it always falls flat. Their explanations are too small, their perspectives too limited. Instead, I have learned to take comfort in what God has revealed in His Word:
“Precious in the sight of the LORD is the death of his saints. O LORD, truly I am your servant; I am your servant, the son of your maidservant; you have freed me from my chains.”
Psalms 116:15-16
“Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.”
Psalm 139:16
“Remember the former things of old;
for I am God, and there is no other;
I am God, and there is none like me,
declaring the end from the beginning
and from ancient times things not yet done,
saying, ‘My counsel shall stand,
and I will accomplish all my purpose.’”
Isaiah 46:9-10
God’s Word doesn’t give a clear reason for why my husband died, but it does offer me perspective. The Bible tells me that my husband’s death wasn’t an oversight or a mystery - it was an event that is precious to the Lord. Precious moments are cherished, planned for, designed, and remembered. They aren’t haphazardly thrown together. They aren’t mistakes. The day God ushered my husband into eternity was as important to God as the day my husband was born and the day his soul was saved from eternal damnation. It was a day God carefully planned long ago.
When I keep these truths in mind, I am able to trust that my inability to understand doesn’t mean there isn’t an explanation. Instead, it might mean that God’s purpose for my husband’s death is too complex, too important, too precious and too tied to eternity for me to comprehend.
Instead of looking for a “rainbow” or a reason that makes my husband’s death “worth it”, I prefer to view his death through the words of Ashley Cochrane Olson (founder of Crowned for Ashes). When speaking of her late husband’s death, she wrote, “I’m not saying his death was worth it. I’m saying God made it matter.” Ashley says that the most profound way God made her late husband’s death matter was by bringing her into a more intimate relationship with Christ. Certainly, God could’ve used other means (which is part of why death can never be “worth it”), but there is beautiful redemption in how God took something terrible and made it matter… for all of eternity.
Dear friend, our husbands’ deaths mattered to God and we can trust that God will make their deaths matter here on earth too - even if it is simply in us learning to trust God in deeper ways. We don’t have to decide their deaths were “worth it” in order to keep loving God. We certainly may never understand what God is doing. But we can trust His Word. He loves us. He loves our husbands. We, and they, are precious to Him.
In Christ,
