19
I Am Expectant
Transforming Disappointment and Loss into Hope
“My friend Cristal started rambling on the phone from the moment I said hello. I was lost. I had no idea what she was talking about. Then came the words every mother dreads: terrible accident, air-lifted. The only thing I fully understood at that moment was that my middle son, Tommy, who was sixteen at the time, was driving and had been in an accident—and I had to get to him.”
Before that fateful day, my friend Rhonda’s life was pleasantly chaotic as a homeschooling mom of nine children. Her husband, Mike, was well known as a local police officer. Rhonda was a popular columnist for their local newspaper. She wrote about raising a large family in the middle of Illinois’s cornfields. As founding members of a local church, their family roots went deep into the soil of their rural community.
Their daughter Hannah was having surgery that morning. With Hannah’s fiancé, Mike and Rhonda had traveled about an hour away from home for the procedure. They were scheduled to stay overnight. But all that changed with the phone call.
“A chaplain met us as we rushed into the hospital. Before he would let us see our boy, he ushered my husband and me to a small private room and shut the door. It wasn’t until then that I learned the whole truth. My sons Tom and Dan, along with their closest friends, were going to a basketball open gym at a local Christian school. At an unmarked country crossroad, a large pickup truck T-boned the boys’ vehicle. That’s when the chaplain uttered the most horrific words in the human vocabulary: ‘Dan died at the scene.’
“It was instant agony. It felt as if my life was draining out onto the hospital floor, bleeding my soul dry.
“We were blessed to be surrounded by people who wanted nothing more than to love and help us. But as time wore on, everyone went back to their own lives—as they should. But nothing was the same for us. Soon, so much of what had been comforting about the home and community we loved became a trigger for grief. Every time I mustered up the strength to leave the house for something as simple as going to the grocery store, the post office, or the bank, I would see someone who would ask how I was doing. All I wanted was to be invisible.
“After a few months, we started feeling the pressure to resume normal life. Life goes on, they say. But normal would include my Danny.
“We were so devastated by his loss that our lives were broken, and I couldn’t fix it. Not for me, not for my children. Our house that had been so full of laughter had turned into a house of sorrow.
“How do you pray when you go through something like this? Worship. I found songs that expressed my heart. I became determined to praise God through the storm. Honestly, I never got angry with God, but I struggled to make sense of my own life. Before the accident, everything in my life fit together—I had purpose. After the accident it was hard to find meaning and purpose.
“One of my first turning points came while I was pouring my heart out in prayer. I told God I couldn’t do it. It was too hard. I wanted my boy back. I felt God speak to my heart. He said, ‘Do you want me to remove him from my presence and give him back to you?’ I knew at that moment that if I loved Danny, I wouldn’t take him from the beauty and peace of heaven. It was then I realized that my torn mother’s heart needed healing. That not only did I want to keep him in the presence of God, but I needed to make sure all my children would one day join him.
“My prayer life completely changed a few weeks later. As I was praying through tears, again telling God how badly I hurt, I felt Jesus say to my heart, ‘Okay, what if I’d said, “Here’s the deal: I will give you this handsome, loving boy for thirteen years. No more. After those years, you will mourn for him the rest of your life.” Would you have taken him?’ You know what? I would have. Without hesitation—knowing the pain and the joy both having him and losing him would bring. Once I saw it that way, I could focus on being truly thankful for the thirteen years I’d had with him.
“I no longer made demands of God. Instead, I envisioned myself crawling up onto His lap and spilling my tears there. When I hurt the worst, I would sing praises to my Father and thank Him for His mercies. Those two acts of prayer brought peace in the midst of unspeakable sorrow. Life no longer holds guarantees. God is the One who is writing my story. I don’t try to take His pen anymore. No matter how it turns out, I can control this: My life will be filled with praise and thankfulness.”
God Is Writing Your Story
I don’t know what type of pain and loss you have experienced in your past, or will experience in your future. Trauma in our lives dictates a need for recovery. One of the things that plagues our human condition is that we are not able to turn back the clock and recapture yesterday. I resonate with Rhonda’s comment that it was impossible to go back to normal. When things are broken in our lives, we may want to go backward, but life demands that we go forward.
God is writing your story. He is a redeemer. He will take the pain, sorrow, and loss and use it to make you more like Him. He uses suffering to teach us more about His ways, which are so much higher than our ways.
I am moved by Rhonda’s personal determination that no matter what, she would praise God. Life does not hold guarantees for any of us. You can’t control your life. Jesus is the only one who is “the same yesterday, today, and forever” (Hebrews 13:8). He is the one who anchors our souls when life is spinning out of control.
Like clay on a potter’s wheel, God uses the spinning motion to make us into His masterpiece. You and I are chosen vessels. I am reminded again of this Scripture promise: “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them” (Ephesians 2:10 NKJV).
The word translated here as workmanship or in other translations as masterpiece is the Greek word poiema, which is:
A design produced by an artisan. Poiema emphasizes God as the Master Designer, the universe as His creation (Romans 1:20), and the redeemed believer as His new creation (Ephesians 2:10). Before conversion our lives had no rhyme or reason. Conversion brought us balance, symmetry, and order. We are God’s poem, His work of art.1
At the time you are experiencing a traumatic event in your life, it doesn’t feel like you have balance, symmetry, and order. Yet God, as the artisan, knows what is required for you and me to become who we are called to be. It does not mean that God purposefully plans for evil things to happen in our lives. What the Enemy means for evil in our lives, God works for good.
Jesus Overcame Death
In this life, death feels permanent. But Jesus overcame death, hell, and the grave when He was crucified, died, and rose again to life. The first to witness Jesus’ resurrection was Mary Magdalene. She was one of the women disciples who followed Jesus. There is no evidence from Scripture that Mary Magdalene was a prostitute. But Scripture does give an account of her being set free from demonic oppression:
Jesus began a tour of the nearby towns and villages, preaching and announcing the Good News about the Kingdom of God. He took his twelve disciples with him, along with some women who had been cured of evil spirits and diseases. Among them were Mary Magdalene, from whom he had cast out seven demons.
Luke 8:1–2
As a woman set free, Mary was a devoted disciple, who traveled with Jesus and the other disciples. The fact that these women were a part of the traveling team shows Jesus’ respect for both men and women. He did not view women as property; He valued what they contributed in ministry.
Mary showed her loyalty to Jesus by staying with Him through His deepest pain. Along with Mary the mother of Jesus, she witnessed Jesus’ torture and crucifixion. The traumatic loss of Jesus crushed all of her hopes for the future. She had given her life to follow and serve Jesus, and now He was gone. Nothing prepared her for what she would experience:
Early in the morning on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone was moved away from the entrance. She ran at once to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, breathlessly panting, “They took the Master from the tomb. We don’t know where they’ve put him.”
John 20:1–2 MSG
Peter and John raced to the tomb. John outran Peter, but it was Peter who first looked inside and found pieces of linen cloth neatly folded. When John went into the tomb and saw the evidence, he believed that Jesus had risen from the dead.
Peter and John went back home, but Mary lingered:
But Mary stood outside the tomb weeping. As she wept, she knelt to look into the tomb and saw two angels sitting there, dressed in white, one at the head, the other at the foot of where Jesus’ body had been laid. They said to her, “Woman, why do you weep?”
“They took my Master,” she said, “and I don’t know where they put him.” After she said this, she turned away and saw Jesus standing there. But she didn’t recognize him.
Jesus spoke to her, “Woman, why do you weep? Who are you looking for?”
She, thinking that he was the gardener, said, “Mister, if you took him, tell me where you put him so I can care for him.”
Jesus said, “Mary.”
Turning to face him, she said in Hebrew, “Rabboni!” meaning “Teacher!”
Jesus said, “Don’t cling to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father. Go to my brothers and tell them, ‘I ascend to my Father and your Father, my God and your God.’”
Mary Magdalene went, telling the news to the disciples: “I saw the Master!” And she told them everything he said to her.
vv. 11–18 MSG
Nothing prepared Mary for finding the tomb empty and then having a conversation with Jesus himself. Jesus helped Mary to see beyond the temporary boundaries of life on earth and pointed her to the greater reality of eternity. Suddenly her pain and loss were turned into triumph and victory. She was a firsthand witness of the truth of the Resurrection.
The Promise of Life after Death
I was thirty-one years old and six months pregnant when I got the call that my father was facing life-and-death surgery. Making arrangements for my three children, I hurried to my father’s side in the hospital. After spending time with him in his room, I marched to the hospital chapel, ready to fight in prayer. I had just taught on the power of God to heal. These promises of healing came to mind as I considered that my dad was only sixty-one with his sixty-second birthday around the corner. He had a lot of life to live. I needed him. My children needed him. He hadn’t even met the baby in my womb.
There had been many other times that I had prayed and seen God heal. Many women facing infertility are now happy mothers of children after we prayed. I witnessed a deaf woman who was part of our life group have her hearing completely restored. I have witnessed God heal all types of diseases as a result of prayer. I was full of faith. Of course God would heal my dad.
As I knelt down and looked up at the chapel altar, God spoke to my heart. He very clearly said, “I’m taking your father home.” I was shocked. Dad was too young to die. But I knew God’s voice, and I felt His peace warm and comfort me.
A few days later, the doctors came back from surgery and gave us their findings. My dad’s entire body was filled with cancer. His liver, his kidneys, his stomach, and his colon were cancer-ridden. Death was imminent.
As a family we sat together in the waiting room, shell-shocked and weeping from the news. Then my brother Dave, a skilled storyteller, began to fill the room with stories about Dad. Dad was a man of great influence, skill, and success, but he was also hilarious. God took our sorrow and turned it into joy as we began to celebrate his life.
Three weeks later, when I walked into the flower-filled church that held my father’s body in the coffin, it was clear. Dad was not there. He was in heaven with Jesus. My overwhelming pain and loss were swallowed up by the comfort of heaven.
Heaven Is Real
With my father’s death, the knowledge of heaven became very real to my heart. During the three weeks prior to his death, Dad had one foot on earth and one in heaven. He was a man who kept current on the news. Yet from the time he stepped foot into the hospital, he didn’t read a newspaper or watch the news. At one point, when we thought he would die that night, we gathered around his bedside in prayer and sang hymns of praise, sensing heaven’s gates ready to welcome him home.
Before Jesus died on the cross, He had talked to His disciples about what was going to happen. They didn’t understand His words at the time. It was as John looked back that the Holy Spirit inspired him to record these words of Jesus:
Let not your heart be troubled; you believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also.
14:1–3 NKJV
Jesus was preparing those He loved for His imminent death as well as their future hope: the wonder of the Father’s house being prepared for those who believe. Jesus has prepared a way for us to live with Him eternally.
Being a believer in Jesus Christ makes our prayers at death different than if we didn’t believe in an afterlife. Our hearts long for a future world. We may not realize it, but the life that we live on earth will never totally satisfy our hearts. Unfinished business, imperfection, failure, loneliness, pain, loss, and disappointment all vanish in heaven. Torment, trial, deception, rejection, and trauma do not pass through the gates of heaven.
Peace illuminates our hearts and minds when we realize we are citizens of another kingdom. Our sojourn here is temporal, filled with tests and trials that will pass away. But our prayer lives will continue into eternity. Our conversation with God will be unending and unhindered by all the confusion of life on this earth.
If you receive Jesus as your Lord and Savior in this life, you will eternally be in God’s presence. He will wipe away all of your tears and fears. Every disappointment will be turned into the hope of eternity. The promise of heaven is real for those who believe.
Resurrection Overwhelms Pain and Loss
Jesus’ resurrection takes the sting out of pain and loss. His resurrection changes everything! All of our lives are reframed by the truth of His victory over death. Jesus’ resurrection is the firstfruits of eternal life for all who believe:
But in fact, Christ has been raised from the dead. He is the first of a great harvest of all who have died. So you see, just as death came into the world through a man, now the resurrection from the dead has begun through another man. Just as everyone dies because we all belong to Adam, everyone who belongs to Christ will be given new life. But there is an order to this resurrection: Christ was raised as the first of the harvest; then all who belong to Christ will be raised when he comes back. . . . Then, when our dying bodies have been transformed into bodies that will never die, this Scripture will be fulfilled: “Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?”
1 Corinthians 15:20–23, 54–55
When sin first came into the world through Adam and Eve, our world went spinning out of control. Prior to the fall of humanity, our world was perfect. There was no disease, death, or even weeds to pull in the garden. There were no hurricanes, earthquakes, tornados, or tsunamis. We would have been free even from the bacteria that cause bad breath and decay.
It’s hard to imagine this perfect world, yet we long for it from the depths of who we are. We know when things are not right and we feel powerless to change what is beyond our control. Yet this itself is our victory. We can cast every sin, weight, trauma, and loss onto Jesus, who overcame. We can’t stop the world from spinning, but the One who put it in motion in the first place will hold our world together even when it seems to be falling apart.
Replacing Pain and Loss with Hope
The hope we have is anchored in the redeeming love of our Savior. Pain and loss will change our perspective, but we can choose how it changes us. We can become bitter or better. The choice is ours.
Pain that is deep and cuts into our soul is often beyond words. It’s so like God to provide a way for us to pray that is beyond the words that we can speak:
And the Holy Spirit helps us in our weakness. For example, we don’t know what God wants us to pray for. But the Holy Spirit prays for us with groanings that cannot be expressed in words. And the Father who knows all hearts knows what the Spirit is saying, for the Spirit pleads for us believers in harmony with God’s own will.
Romans 8:26–27
At times of my deepest pain and loss, my prayer often begins with lying facedown, groaning and weeping before God. Because I trust Him, I don’t have to hold it all together. In my weakness, I know He will be strong. I can completely fall apart, knowing that He is the One who takes the spinning of my world and like a potter uses it to make me into the masterpiece that He always knew I would be.
Reading the Bible and praying calibrates your brain cells. Every day you are bombarded by the depressing echo of the world. You can replace the traumatic pain and loss that you have suffered in the past with the present and future hope of Jesus Christ.
Hope is confident expectation in God. God is the fulfillment of all of your hopes and dreams. Hope rises from the ashes of destruction. Hope overpowers sarcasm and cynicism. Hope is eternal. Hope is a settled certainty in God’s answered prayers. Christian hope is more than a wish or a desire. Hope is the light of God that overwhelms darkness.
A helpful acronym for hope is:
H—Hold
O—on
P—Pain
E—Ends
We most need to hang on to hope when everything in our life is pointing to death and destruction. Depression begins when hope ends. The difference between those of us who throw in the towel and quit and those who rebuild and keep going is summarized in one word—hope.
Replacing pain and loss with God’s hope is built on our joy-filled anticipation of God making all things right. Pain and loss come in all shapes and sizes in our lives. It may be losing a loved one, a job, or friends. The pain of loss we feel through betrayal, rejection, and abandonment can hang on us like graveclothes unless we cast off the death they bring to our emotions and replace it with the hope of Jesus.
It’s important for you to realize in prayer that you can’t fix everything. There are situations in your life that you won’t have the full perspective on until you are with Jesus. You and I will look back at the petty things that brought us pain and see the wind of His Spirit blow it away.
Setbacks in your life are often setups for Jesus to use you. Let’s allow the Potter to use the pain in our lives to make us vessels of honor. You can try to fight against the Potter’s hand and how He is shaping you, or you can embrace the process of transformation. Being on the Potter’s wheel will take time. In fact, it will take your whole life and into eternity.
God, you are the Potter, I am the clay. When my life is spinning out of control, I choose to believe that my life is in your hands and that you are bringing purpose out of my pain.
Creative Artisan, my life has been marred by destruction and loss. Take the ugly things that the Enemy meant for evil and make me a masterpiece in your hands. I trust you to shape me.
I know that I can’t go backward. I can only go forward.
Jesus, thank you for being the same yesterday, today, and forever. You are my future and my hope. I anticipate being in your presence for all of eternity. I choose you as my Lord and Savior. I turn away from the sin and destruction of my past. I surrender to your perfecting will in my life. I forgive those who have used and abused me. I turn them over to your care. They are also on your Potter’s wheel. I trust you to change them as you are also changing me. And I entrust to your care those whom I have loved and lost.
You are the resurrection and the life. With joy-filled anticipation, I look forward to the day of being in heaven with you and all those who love your name. Holy Spirit, I thank you that you are the down payment and the guarantee of eternity.
Fill me afresh with your Spirit. Comfort me in my loss. Empower me to make a difference here on earth. Make my life count. You are my joy and delight. I trust you. In Jesus’ name I pray, amen.