I wear glasses. Thick ones. Coke bottles, really. It’s completely cringeworthy, but I confess I was rather proud of the tinted ones I had that were so popular in 1985. You know them: gigantic, squarish lenses with a line of blue tint on the top portion, then clear in the middle, then pink on the bottom portion—ever providing the glamorous look of blue eye shadow and pink blush. Yeah, superhot in an eighties kind of way. If only my permed hair would’ve feathered out on the sides, then the boy with the parachute pants and cropped neon yellow muscle shirt who sat in the second row would have liked me.

Anyway, I got my glasses in the fourth grade and suffered through the rest of elementary and junior high with those sweet babies, along with braces and horrible hair, until I upgraded to contact lenses in ninth grade—thank you, Jesus. My point is not my awkward years, nor is it to garner your sympathy; it’s that I’m incredibly nearsighted, so much so that I often see things distortedly. Yesterday, when I saw a piece of wadded-up string that I was positive was a black widow, I quarantined the area and swooped up the baby lightning fast. Myopia can be a problem, causing a girl to scream bloody murder without good reason.

As I’ve walked through my season of deep grief, I have come to realize it’s not only my eyes that are nearsighted but also the sight that’s in my heart and mind. While drying out from being blasted with a fire hose of Bible verses and so many hurtful clichés about loss, I’ve become aware that I can’t see past my own nose, much less my situation of suffering. So when Romans 8:28—or some other supposedly confident and cheerful verse—is spouted by some well-meaning soul, I see it distortedly.

How can everything work together for good for those called according to God’s purpose? Does Paul not know my daughter suffered and died? Does he not realize people are broken and abused and betrayed? How can these things be good? Is he nuts?

It’s in this gradual realization of my own obscured vision that I’ve come to see how so many of us in Western Christian culture have such a skewed view of God’s goodness. There is a selfishness in our Christianity—in the thoughtless, consumer-driven, #blessed culture we find on the shelves of Christian bookstores. We throw around the word blessing haphazardly, as if God is a supernatural Santa Claus just waiting to bring treats to good little girls and boys.

But what of truly suffering believers? What about the newly homeless family who has watched helplessly while sickness settled in and took every last penny? What about the people forced to work the most disgusting jobs—in slaughterhouses, in public restrooms, in fields picking poison-covered produce—just to get by? What does our view of God and his blessings have to say to them? Have the homeless and destitute signed up for a different brand of Christianity than I? Is God’s goodness the same for the middle-class, Honda-driving, well-fed, and fully insured as it is for those who are devastated and afflicted? What does blessed even mean?

My adult life, and particularly my married life, was quite “blessed” for the first eleven years. It was very pretty, very Instagrammable. The highs were gloriously high, and the lows weren’t so low as to be deal-breakers. Not too long after we began to date, Britt and I started going to a Bible study. Two party animals by nature, we found Jesus together and were moved and transformed by God’s Word. My husband was born into a surfboard-making family, owners of the top brand in the world, and he was destined to take over the business. But upon hearing a different call from Jesus just three months after we married, Britt took over the college group at our church and became ordained as a pastor, thereby ending our careers as heathens for good. Attendance at the meetings multiplied from eight kids to eight hundred. It was rocking, it was a blast, and, though we had the usual ups and downs in ministry, it was successful and amazing. The experience bred deep relationships and allowed us to witness many miracles.

Within six years we had our son, Isaiah, became pregnant with Daisy immediately after a miscarriage, and obeyed a new calling to plant a church in our hometown. Four hundred people came to the first service—and Reality, our very own church baby, was born. It was wonderful and fulfilling right off the bat. We lived in a pretty house in a charming neighborhood and neatly filled our three-bedroom, two-bathroom fortress of hardwood and wainscoting with cute kids: one boy, one girl. Our marriage was solid and satisfying, and my husband was exemplary, always working hard, rising at four a.m. and putting in thirteen-hour days while still giving us his all when he was home. We had surf dates, picnics by the lake, and fly-fishing trips to the family cabin in Montana. Blessed marriage, blessed kids, blessed house, blessed life.

Then bam! Right in the middle of all that pretty, cancer snuck in the side door, dropped its drawers, and made a mess all over. Caught off guard by the hovering nearness of death, the change in atmosphere turned foul. I found myself asking where all the blessing went. Why was I suddenly sprawled out on my backside, legs flayed, scratching for control like an overturned turtle? Suddenly all the blessings looked, well, cheap.

Strangely, the abrupt switch in circumstances generated a humiliating feeling. It’s uncomfortable to be so vulnerable. One minute you’re cruising the Pacific Coast Highway with the top down, wind gently tousling your perfectly layered hair, and the next it’s raining on your leather seats, you have a flat tire, and you’re waiting for the tow truck. You wrap your arms around your knees as the other cars fly by, filled with passengers safe and warm, bopping to their favorite songs while you just hope you don’t get recognized.

After all my years as a Christian and living in this great country where we are stuffed to the gills with plenty, I’ve come to realize that blessed means something completely different to God than it does to us. We want it to mean that everything is perfect all the time. No speed bumps, no bruises, no pain. Not even a bad hair day. But unless I want my soul to disintegrate under the heavy hand of loss, I find that as I live another day and face another heartache, I need to open my eyes and see beyond. I need to see with sharp focus what the Bible really says about blessing, God’s goodness, and living an abundant life.

You know, Jesus’ disciples crack me up. They seem like my kind of people. They were working folk, sinners, a brotherhood, and—well, let’s just say they were keeping it country. I love how they could be so teachable one moment, learning from the lips of the Messiah about his coming suffering, death, and resurrection—basically the most pressingly important thing—and then the next moment they were pulling Jesus aside to ask for special recognition and honor, for their definition of blessing.

“Sure, Jesus, that’s nice. Now, back to me.” (See Mark 10:33–37.)

Really, guys? Unbelievable!

But aren’t we just the same? We tend to nod and say “yeah, yeah” to so many of the most important things he wants to tell us. Then, as quickly as possible, we try to refocus the conversation on “what really matters”: our own wants and desires. It’s easy to point the finger, to laugh out loud at Peter’s foibles and James’s and John’s zealous and thunderous proclamations, but that is you and that is me. We are the same. We see things through an unfocused, muddied lens, not as they really are.

Jesus is so loving, so warmhearted and tender. I always imagine him gently guiding me to a better place after I’ve failed to see clearly: “Maybe if you feel like it, Kate, or feel led, or feel called, would you want to journal about seeing things from God’s perspective, possibly looking just a teeny bit past your own? Only if that feels right to you while you’re having your fair-trade coffee and gluten-free croissant. And yes, I’ll be your boyfriend and hold your hand and affirm your musings while you fill the pages of leather journals with the incredibly important feelings from your heart.”

Or sometimes, I imagine him good-naturedly shaking his shoulder-length, naturally highlighted hair, thinking, Aren’t they cute? Aw, they’ll learn. Just kids. Then he picks us up and swings us around, never wrinkling or spoiling his white robe and light blue sash.

But as I’ve dug more deeply into Scripture, I’ve found it to be a different story. In Matthew 16:21–23, Jesus again predicted his death and resurrection to the disciples. Peter took Jesus aside (first red flag—I mean, who takes Jesus aside?) and reprimanded him (what?!), saying, “No way! Heaven forbid that this should happen.” Peter was filtering the terrifying but lifesaving words of Jesus through his own lens—his finite, natural, man lens. Can’t say that I blame him, by the way. It would also seem to me that the torture and murder of the Son of Man would be the most deplorable of things to happen; but the well-intentioned Peter was about to get the smackdown from the gentle Lamb of God.

“Get away from me, Satan!” Jesus said. “You are seeing things merely from a human point of view, not from God’s” (v. 23).

Um, did Jesus just call Peter “Satan”? It seems that my imaginary pushover Jesus is just that: imaginary. This was no wink of the eye, no waving away of errant thinking, but a solid rebuke. I mean, getting called a jerk is a bummer, and liar or thief or tramp is never good. But Satan?

Jesus meant business. He was about to do the hardest thing in the history of the universe, to embrace pain and suffering and hardship, and he didn’t need any of his buddies tempting him to do otherwise.

Just like Peter, we flinch at the slightest prospect of discomfort. We’ve been conditioned to expect ease as a sign of God’s blessing, but that is not how Jesus would have us live. It’s not how he lived. The last time I checked, he came to give life—abundant life—but maybe that looks a little different from what we thought.

I need this new vision; I need this rebuke. I still find myself momentarily lost in memories driven mercilessly by my darkest moments, when my tongue is thick in my mouth as if numbed by novocaine and my heart is lodged firmly in my throat. I relive the long nights at the hospital in flashes, the burning sensation of fear taking over my skin. My eyes prickle, face hot, when I think of Daisy’s sunken eyes, her weak body, her inability to lift her head. And I feel the emptiness in my body caused by the moment when her lifeless shell was taken from my arms and left them hanging like an old rusty swing, nodding in the breeze to no one in particular. That is my life.

And it feels anything but blessed.

I think the core of how we define blessing, is how we feel the love of God—tangibly with the way our lives shake out, with what we receive. If life goes well for me, then I am blessed. God must love me. But if things don’t go according to plan, suddenly I am thrown for a loop. Doesn’t God promise to care for us? Isn’t his love shown most clearly when he blesses his children with good things?

In Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, he tells us not to worry, convinces us we are far more valuable than the birds God provides for, lacking nothing. He promises that if God cares so wonderfully for the wildflowers, he will certainly care for us. And by the way, why do we have so little faith?

I’ll tell you why: because Daisy died. My daughter endured brutal sickness and died a tragic death. Because God allowed so much tragedy in my family. Because it appeared he didn’t hear our cries, because he turned his face from our deepest desire. Because my sparrow fell, and he didn’t seem to notice. That’s why I have so little faith. That’s why it’s difficult to believe I am valuable to God.

But here’s where I’m wrong. Here’s where I have exchanged what I see dimly for what God is crystal clear about. Here’s where I shake up our Western understanding of blessing. Whether we are aware of it or not, we tie God’s love directly to the tangible presence of what we consider to be good things, but what if his care for us means something else entirely? What if my life turning out exactly the way I wanted it to doesn’t equal God loving me? I didn’t feel God’s love for a while in my grief, but it was there. I had just forgotten the truth.

Remember how I was so irked by Paul and his “all things work together” spiel? I was so busy asking Paul snarky questions that I missed how he himself had a tough row to hoe. Mere days after his conversion on the road to Damascus, he started receiving death threats. In the coming years, he was beaten with rods, whipped, given thirty-nine lashes five different times, imprisoned, shipwrecked, stoned. He knew hunger, thirst, heat, and cold, faced dangers in cities, deserts, and on seas. Paul knew suffering.

Yet he wrote this in Romans 8:35, 38–39 (emphasis mine):

Can anything ever separate us from Christ’s love? Does it mean he no longer loves us if we have trouble or calamity, or are persecuted, or hungry, or destitute, or in danger, or threatened with death? . . . I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Exhale . . . The love of God is outside of circumstances. I had believed a lie.

Most of the American church believes this lie. Blessing does not mean we get our life dished out on a silver platter. No, it means that while we were enemies of God, he loved us. Lose sight of that love, and we miss out on a whole world of real life. When we hang on to false ideologies, it kills our joy. It makes us stoop down to whatever the current state of affairs is, rather than stand tall in the confidence of one who is secure in love.

But when we humble ourselves and ask God to show us the truth, we will find that after the initial sting of seeing our shortcomings comes the sweet release of repentance. Peter knew firsthand those precious words: “Repent . . . that times of refreshing may come” (Acts 3:19 NIV). And so, I have found myself waking up like the blooming coral sunrise peeking through the canyon where I live.

It does not happen overnight; these things take time. Even just last night I sat on my patio, watching the sun burn and sizzle lazily down behind the horses in the pasture, quenched by the ocean beyond the hill. As I watched the stars timidly tiptoeing out one by one, I felt bare before the Creator. Bats flitted around the stark silhouette of the eucalyptus trees, the crescent moon hung delicately in translucent lavender and indigo, and I remembered yet again that he sees things not as I do. I am so small. I am one of seven billion, and yet he knows my name, knows my hurt, knows my future. Wrapped in the same creamy white, downy blanket that I often wrapped around my sick Daisy, I just sat. Prayed. Repented. And let the truth of his love wash over my tired soul.

I needed, and I need, time alone with him. I needed, and I need, to look up. We all need to look up. Please, for the love of your Maker, look up. Look up from the screen, the chores, the distractions, the things that make us believe we’re less than blessed. Look up from the unnecessary things we cram into our lives, the things we tightly wedge in every corner to keep us full. Give God a chance to speak; allow yourself to be alone with him, creating space to see the way he is loving you beyond your human understanding.

It takes courage; it takes honesty. It takes willingness to be convicted, to repent, and to be healed. It takes willingness to be softened, willingness to face your demons. It takes guts. But that’s where the healing begins, in the counterintuitive place of surrender and in that place of perspective.

It’s time to see things not from our human point of view but from God’s and to let Jesus call us out. We need to know how to navigate the open wounds and the unmet heart desires of this risky and dangerous life, but we have not been left in those hard and confusing places on our own. We are free to thrash and mourn and be human in our heartbreak, but when it’s time to set the anguish aside, there is a way out of the pit of despair. We have the key, the map. We have the correct lens prescription. We are the recipients of ancient mysteries privy only to the friends of God.

I’m not sure if Jesus would say, “Get behind me, Satan,” to my blindness, but I do know that he desires us to be on the same page. True fellowship begins here. Like with a bestie or a spouse, the more we exchange ideas and truths and show who we really are, the more deeply we will come to know God’s love. I’ve found that the more I press into this, the more I don’t hinge God’s blessing and love upon my circumstances. And that sparks hope.

So I dialogue with God, I read his Word, I listen to his voice. I crowd closer to him so that I can hear more clearly, so that I can understand more fully. This purposeful rearrangement of my point of view has given me wings. My faith has always been there, but the way I see things has changed; it has aged, matured, cured to a fuller and more developed flavor. Instead of reactive living according to circumstances, I have learned to peel back a few layers, to see what the heartbeat behind this crazy life is all about. I am discovering the way Jesus seeps from tears of sorrow and joy alike. I am finding security in his undeniable love, and it makes my heart sing.

Let’s shift our thinking from merely human to divine. Let’s trade in our Coke-bottle glasses for the lenses of truth. Let’s adjust our definitions of blessings and hardship, to live abundantly and purposefully, even walking through the valley of the shadow of death. This life isn’t all just a beach, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t blessed.

Wind rushed fresh in my face, and my hair flapped behind me like a carefree kite tail. With the sun on my shoulders, I leaned forward into the experience. Then I heard from a car window: “Nice ride!”

It came from a wizened old woman in the middle of the Trader Joe’s parking lot. I had hopped on the back of my cart right out of the gate, careening straight toward my Honda Pilot, and I was booking it. Smiling to myself at her encouragement, I rode that thing like the wind all the way through the parking lot then filled my trunk full with food God had provided, whispering prayers of thanks.

I had gotten used to going to the grocery store wearing a baseball cap and sunglasses. Head down and feet dragging, hoping not to make eye contact with anyone. But now times of refreshing had begun to come. Understanding God’s love outside of circumstances sparked a flicker of light, a brightness that comes with the readjustment of perspective. A freedom that makes a girl feel loved, even while she grieves.

I can feel the atmosphere beginning to change again. This time from the stifling covering of gloom to one steadily giving way to joy. I can feel the emotional cloud cover beginning to burn off as the sun shines more brightly. To practice enjoying the sweetness of life is a wondrous thing. I think I’m off to a great start.