The Challenge to Faith
The other gods were strong, but Thou was weak.
They rode, but Thou didst stumble to a throne.
But to our wounds only God’s wounds can speak,
And not a god has wounds but Thou alone.
—Edward Shillito, from “Jesus of the Scars”
Answers for the Heart
We said that the visceral argument against God happens at the heart level. Pascal’s insightful phrase “reasons of the heart” refers neither to mere irrational feelings nor simply to logical propositions. They are best described as intuitions—explanations that not only give some light to the mind but are also existentially comforting or satisfying. A “reason for the heart,” unlike an abstract proposition, affects and changes attitudes and actions. I propose that there are three powerful themes of Christian teaching that can serve us in this way when it comes to the pain and suffering of life. Each one not only helps enrich our understanding of suffering but directly affects our attitudes, giving us a new frame of heart capable of facing adversity.
The first set of Christian teachings that frame the heart in this way are the doctrines of creation and fall. Genesis 1 and 2 show us humankind put by God into a world without death or suffering. The evil we see today was not part of God’s original design. It was not God’s intent for human life. That means that ultimately, even a peaceful death at the age of ninety years old is not the way things were meant to be. Those of us who sense the “wrongness” of death—in any form—are correct. The “rage at the dying of the light” is our intuition that we were not meant for mortality, for the loss of love, or for the triumph of darkness. In order to help people face death and grief we often tell people that death is a perfectly natural part of life. But that asks them to repress a very right and profound human intuition—that we were not meant to simply go to dust, and that love was meant to last.
Genesis 3 confirms this intuition in great detail, showing us the origin of the world’s darkness and how it unfolded out of our refusal to let God be our lord and king. When we turned from God and lost that relationship, all other relationships fell apart. Because we rejected his authority everything about the world—our hearts, emotions, bodies, our relationships to other people, and our relationship to nature itself—stopped working as it should.
The Fall of humankind means that the original design of the world is broken. In the Garden, men and women were called to work—to care for and cultivate the earth. When Adam and Eve sinned, part of the curse was that now “thorns and thistles” would grow out of the ground as well as flowers and food. This means that the good pattern of the life God created here is not completely eradicated, but it now falls far short of its original intent. It should be that hard work would always lead to prosperity, but now sometimes you can work hard and injustice or disaster wipes it away. The doctrine of the Fall, then, gives us a remarkably nuanced understanding of suffering.
On the one hand, this teaching rejects the idea that people who suffer more are always worse people than those who suffer less. That was the self-righteous premise of Job’s friends who sat around him and said, “The reason this is happening to you and not to us is because we are living right and you are not.” At the end of the book, God expresses his fury at Job’s “miserable comforters.” The world is too fallen and deeply broken to divide into a neat pattern of good people having good lives and bad people having bad lives. The brokenness of the world is inherited by the entire human race. As Jesus says, the sun shines and the rain falls on both the just and the unjust (Matt 5:45). The individual sufferer is not necessarily receiving a due payment for specific wrongdoings.
But on the other hand, while we must never say that every particular instance of suffering is caused by a particular sin, it is fair to say that suffering and death in general is a natural consequence and just judgment of God on our sin. Therefore we cannot protest that the human race, considering our record, deserves a better life than the one we have now.
All of this comprises a “reason of the heart” for sufferers because, when accepted, it brings the relief of humility. Often the unstated assumption of many people is that it is God’s job to create a world in which things benefit us. We saw how the Deism of the eighteenth century explicitly promoted this idea though it was at loggerheads with the book of Genesis and the rest of the Bible. Nevertheless, this idea has captured the hearts of most people, as sociologist Christian Smith points out. From his research he concluded that most young American adults are “practical Deists”—though few of them have ever heard the term. Smith means that they see God as a being whose job it is to meet their needs. The implicit but strong cultural assumption of young adults is that God owes all but the most villainous people a comfortable life. This premise, however, inevitably leads to bitter disillusionment. Life is nasty, hard, brutish, and always feels too short. The presumption of spiritual entitlement dooms its bearers to a life of confusion when things in life inevitably go wrong.
When we stand back to consider the premise—that God owes us a good life—it is clearly unwarranted. If there really is an infinitely glorious God, why should the universe revolve around us rather than around him? If we look at the biblical God’s standards for our behavior—the Golden Rule, the Ten Commandments, and the Sermon on the Mount—and then consider humanity’s record against those norms, it may occur to us that the real riddle of evil is not what we thought. Perhaps the real puzzle is this: Why, in light of our behavior as a human race, does God allow so much happiness? The teaching of creation and fall removes the self-pity that afflicts people with the deistic view of life. It strengthens the soul, preparing it to be unsurprised when life is hard.
The second Christian doctrine that speaks so well to our hearts is that of the final judgment and the renewal of the world. Many people complain that they cannot believe in a God who judges and punishes people. But if there is no Judgment Day, what about all the enormous amount of injustice that has been and is being perpetrated? If there is no Judgment Day, then there are only two things to do—lose all hope or turn to vengeance. Either it means that the tyranny and oppression that have been so dominant over the ages will never be redressed, and in the end it will make no difference whether you live a life of justice and kindness or a life of cruelty and selfishness, or it means that, since there is no Judgment Day, we will need to take up our weapons and go and hunt down the evildoers now. We will have to take justice into our own hands. We will have to be the judges, if there is no Judge.
And so the biblical doctrine of Judgment Day, far from being a gloomy idea, enables us to live with both hope and grace. If we accept it, we get hope and incentive to work for justice. For no matter how little success we may have now, we know that justice will be established—fully and perfectly. All wrongs—what we have called moral evil—will be redressed. But it also enables us to be gracious, to forgive, and to refrain from vengefulness and violence. Why? If we are not sure that there will be a final judgment, then when we are wronged, we will feel an almost irresistible compulsion to take up the sword and smite the wrongdoers. But if we know that no one will get away with anything, and that all wrongs will be ultimately redressed, then we can live in peace. The doctrine of Judgment Day warns us that we have neither the knowledge to know exactly what people deserve, nor the right to mete out punishment when we are sinners ourselves (Rom 2:1–16, 12:17–21). So belief in Judgment Day keeps us from being too passive or too violently aggressive in our pursuit of truth and justice.
But it is what lies on the far side of Judgment Day that is of the deepest consolation to sufferers. Peter van Inwagen writes:
At some point, for all eternity, there will be no more unmerited suffering: this present darkness, “the age of evil,” will eventually be remembered as a brief flicker at the beginning of human history. Every evil done by the wicked to the innocent will have been avenged, and every tear will have been wiped away.201
As we have said, there is no fully satisfying theodicy that completely shows why God is justified in allowing evil. Nevertheless, the Christian doctrine of the resurrection and the renewal of the world—when all the biblical promises and implications are weighed and grasped—comes the closest to any real explanation we have. The resurrection of the body means that we do not merely receive a consolation for the life we have lost but a restoration of it. We not only get the bodies and lives we had but the bodies and lives we wished for but had never before received. We get a glorious, perfect, unimaginably rich life in a renewed material world.
Often we can see how bad things “work together for good” (Rom 8:28). The problem is that we can only glimpse this sometimes, in a limited number of cases. But why could it not be that God allowed evil because it will bring us all to a far greater glory and joy than we would have had otherwise? Isn’t it possible that the eventual glory and joy we will know will be infinitely greater than it would have been had there been no evil? What if that future world will somehow be greater for having once been broken and lost? If such is the case, that would truly mean the utter defeat of evil. Evil would not just be an obstacle to our beauty and bliss, but it will have only made it better. Evil would have accomplished the very opposite of what it intended.
How might that come about? At the simplest level, we know that only if there is danger can there be courage. And apart from sin and evil, we would never have seen the courage of God, or the astonishing extent of his love, or the glory of a deity who lays aside his glory and goes to the cross. For us here in this life, the thought of God’s glory is rather remote and abstract. But we must realize that the most rapturous delights you have ever had—in the beauty of a landscape, or in the pleasure of food, or in the fulfillment of a loving embrace—are like dewdrops compared to the bottomless ocean of joy that it will be to see God face-to-face (1 John 3:1–3). That is what we are in for, nothing less. And according to the Bible, that glorious beauty, and our enjoyment of it, has been immeasurably enhanced by Christ’s redemption of us from evil and death. We are told that the angels long to endlessly gaze into the gospel, into the wonder of what Jesus did in his incarnation and atonement (1 Pet 1:12).
Paul speaks mysteriously that we who know Christ and the power of his resurrection also know “the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings”202 (Phil 3:10–11). Alvin Plantinga points to the teachings of older Reformed theologians, such as Jonathan Edwards and Abraham Kuyper, who believed that because of our fall and redemption, we will achieve a level of intimacy with God that cannot be received any other way. And therefore the angels are envious of it.203 What if, in the future, we came to see that just as Jesus could not have displayed such glory and love any other way except through his suffering, we would not have been able to experience such transcendent glory, joy, and love any other way except by going through a world of suffering?
And why could it not be that our future glory will actually so “swallow” the evil of the past that in some unimaginable way even the memory of the evil won’t darken our hearts but only make us happier? C. S. Lewis’s fantasy story of heaven and hell—The Great Divorce—depicts hell and all the people within it as having become microscopically small. He writes that, when on earth, people say “no future bliss can make up” for a particular instance of suffering, “not knowing that Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory.”204 This is an effort to convey the same idea that J. R. R. Tolkien does when he envisions a time in which “everything sad is going to come untrue.”205
The Wounds of God
The final doctrines that serve as resources for our hearts are the doctrines of the incarnation and the atonement.
Peter Berger is a sociologist, not a theologian, but he knows that every culture must provide a way to make sense of suffering for its members. Berger sees in the Bible two basic ways it does that. In the Old Testament book of Job, we have the most difficult and severe truth about suffering—namely, that in the end we cannot question God. Job calls on God to explain why such sorrows and griefs have come upon him. But in response, “the questioner is radically challenged to his right to pose the question in the first place.”206 God confronts Job with his own finitude, his inability to understand God’s counsels and purposes even if they were revealed, and his status as a sinner in no position to demand a comfortable life. Berger admits that this view of things has a strong logic to it, but that all by itself such a vision would be “hard to sustain for most people . . . only possible for certain religious ‘virtuosi.’”207 Fortunately for us, that is not the Bible’s last word on suffering.
Berger says that the “unbearable tension of this problem brought about . . . by the Old Testament” is met with “the essential Christian solution of the problem.” And that solution is that “the incarnate God is a God who suffers. Without this suffering, without the agony of the cross, the incarnation would not provide that solution of the problem of [suffering] to which, we would contend, it owes its immense potency.” Berger then quotes Albert Camus, who wrote: “Only the sacrifice of an innocent god could justify the endless and universal torture of innocence. Only the most abject suffering by God could assuage man’s agony.”208
Berger sees the brilliance of the solution. He writes:
Through Christ the terrible otherness of the Yahweh of the thunderstorms [in Job] is mellowed. At the same time, because the contemplation of Christ’s suffering deepens the conviction of man’s unworthiness, the old [repentant] surrender is allowed to repeat itself in a more refined . . . manner. . . . [For] Christ’s suffering does not justify God, but man.209
The book of Job rightly points to human unworthiness and finitude, and calls for complete surrender to the sovereignty of God. But taken by itself the call might seem more than a sufferer could bear. Then the New Testament comes filled with an unimaginable comfort for those who are trusting in God’s sovereignty. The sovereign God himself has come down into this world and has experienced its darkness. He has personally drunk the cup of its suffering down to the dregs. And he did it not to justify himself but to justify us, that is, to bear the suffering, death, and curse for sin that we have earned. He takes the punishment upon himself so that someday he can return and end all evil without having to condemn and punish us.
The New Testament teaches that Jesus was God come in the flesh—“in him all the fullness of the Godhead dwelled bodily” (Col 2:9). He was God yet he suffered. He experienced weakness, a life filled “with fervent cries and tears” (Heb 5:7). He knew firsthand rejection and betrayal, poverty and abuse, disappointment and despair, bereavement, torture, and death. And so he is “able to empathize with our weaknesses” for he “has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet without sin” (Heb 4:15). On the cross, he went beyond even the worst human suffering and experienced cosmic rejection and a pain that exceeds ours as infinitely as his knowledge and power exceeds ours. There is no greater inner agony than the loss of a love relationship. We cannot imagine, however, what it would be like to lose not just a human relationship that has lasted for some years but the infinite love of the Father that Jesus had from all eternity. The separation would have been infinitely unbearable. And so Jesus experienced Godforsakenness itself on the cross when he cried out, “My God, my God! Why have you forsaken me?”
Here we see the ultimate strength—a God who is strong enough to voluntarily become weak and plunge himself into vulnerability and darkness out of love for us. And here we see the greatest possible glory—the willingness to lay aside all his glory out of love for us.
There is no other religion that even conceives of such a thing. Christian minister John Dickson once spoke on the theme of the wounds of God on a university campus in Sydney, Australia. During the question time, a Muslim man rose to explain “how preposterous was the claim that the Creator of the universe should be subjected to the forces of his own creation—that he would have to eat, sleep, and go to the toilet, let alone die on a cross.” Dickson said his remarks were intelligent, cogent, and civil. The man went on to argue that it was illogical that God, the “cause of all causes” could have pain inflicted on him by any lesser beings. The minister felt he had no knockdown argument, no witty comeback. So finally he simply thanked the man for making the uniqueness of the Christian claim so clear. “What the Muslim denounces as blasphemy the Christian holds precious: God has wounds.”210
So Peter Berger is right. The answer of the book of Job—that “God knows what he’s doing, so be quiet and trust him”—is right but insufficient. It is inadequate because alone it is cold and because the New Testament gives us more with which to face the terrors of life. We turned from God, but God did not abandon us. Only Christianity, of all the world’s major religions, teaches that God came to earth in Jesus Christ and became subject to suffering and death himself.
See what this means? Yes, we do not know the reason God allows evil and suffering to continue, or why it is so random, but now at least we know what the reason is not. It cannot be that he does not love us. It cannot be that he does not care. He is so committed to our ultimate happiness that he was willing to plunge into the greatest depths of suffering himself. He understands us, he has been there, and he assures us that he has a plan to eventually wipe away every tear. Someone might say, “But that’s only half an answer to the question ‘Why?’” Yes, but it is the half we need.
If God actually provided an explanation of all the reasons why he allows things to happen as they do, it would be too much for our finite brains. Think of little children and their relationship to their parents. Three-year-olds cannot understand most of why their parents allow and disallow what they do. But though they aren’t capable of comprehending their parents’ reasons, they are capable of knowing their parents’ love and therefore are capable of trusting them and living securely. That is what they really need. Now, the difference between God and human beings is infinitely greater than the difference between a thirty-year-old parent and a three-year-old child. So we should not expect to be able to grasp all God’s purposes, but through the cross and gospel of Jesus Christ, we can know his love. And that is what we need most.
In Ann Voskamp’s book One Thousand Gifts, she shares her journey to understand the senseless death of her sister, crushed by a truck at the age of two. In the end, she concludes that the primary issue is whether we trust God’s character. Is he really loving? Is he really just? Her conclusion:
[God] gave us Jesus. . . . If God didn’t withhold from us His very own Son, will God withhold anything we need? If trust must be earned, hasn’t God unequivocally earned our trust with the bark on the raw wounds, the thorns pressed into the brow, your name on the cracked lips? How will he not also graciously give us all things He deems best and right? He’s already given us the incomprehensible.211
The Light in the Darkness
This is a dark world. There are many ways we keep that darkness at bay, but we cannot do it forever. Eventually the lights of our lives—love, health, home, work—will begin go out. And when that happens, we will need something more than what our own understanding, competence, and power can give us.
In Isaiah 9:2 and Matthew 4:16, we are told that in the birth of Jesus, “the people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned.” But, you may say, if Jesus is the light of the world, why when he came into the world did he not do something about the suffering and darkness? Children still die premature and horrible deaths. The poor are still downtrodden. Young fathers still die in accidents, leaving widows and orphans to fend for themselves. There are still wars and rumors of wars. Why didn’t he stop it all?
But what if when Jesus came to earth he had not died young but had come to put down injustice and end evil? What would the result have been for us? Remember Tolkien’s dictum: “Always after a defeat and a respite . . . [evil] takes another shape and grows again.”212 He’s right. Consider the scientific and technological advances that have brought untold benefits in health care and communication. The communication revolution has even been credited with bringing down the Iron Curtain and ending the Cold War. Yet many well-informed people now are afraid that terrorists will use that technology to bring down whole sectors of the electronic grid and wipe out trillions in wealth and bring on a worldwide depression. Nuclear energy is also a great source of power when harnessed properly, yet we know the likelihood of nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism. When a new development pushes back evil in one form, evil always finds a way to use that development to bring itself home to us in new shapes and forms.
Why? It is because the evil and darkness of this world comes to a great degree from within us. Martin Luther taught that human nature is in curvatus in se, curved in on itself. We are so instinctively and profoundly self-centered that we don’t believe we are. And this curved-in-ness is a source of a vast amount of the suffering and evil we experience, from the violence and genocides in the headlines down to the reason your marriage is so painful. Philosopher John Gray is an atheist, but on this point he agrees with the book of Genesis.
In comparison with the Genesis myth, the modern myth in which humanity is marching to a better future is mere superstition. As the Genesis story teaches, knowledge cannot save us from ourselves. If we know more than before, it means only that we have greater scope to enact our fantasies. . . . The message of Genesis is that in the most vital areas of human life there can be no progress, only an unending struggle with our own nature.213
Now do you see what would have happened at Jesus’ first coming to earth if he’d come with a sword in his hand and a power to destroy all sources of suffering and evil? It would have meant there would be no human beings left. If you don’t think that is fair, I would argue that you don’t know your own capabilities, your own heart.
But Jesus did not come to earth the first time to bring justice but rather to bear it. He came not with a sword in his hands but with nails through his hands. Christian teaching for centuries has been this: Jesus died on the cross in our place, taking the punishment our sins deserve, so that someday he can return to earth to end evil without destroying us all.
Jesus did not come back the first time with a political program to cast off the Roman oppression—as good as that may have been. He did not want to do merely the thing we human beings can (and must do)—oppose and prevent the latest form of evil. No, he had a more radical program. He was born into the world and died on the cross and rose from the dead to begin that program. His death and resurrection created a people in the world who now have a unique and powerful ability to diminish the evil in their own hearts as well as a mandate to oppose and endure without flagging the evil they find in their communities and society. And it was all because the Son of God entered into human suffering to turn evil on its head and eventually end evil, sin, suffering, and death itself for good.
The Bible says that Jesus is the light of the world. If you know you are in his love, and that nothing can snatch you out of his hand, and that he is taking you to God’s house and God’s future—then he can be a light for you in dark places when all other lights go out. His love for you now—and this infallible hope for the future—are indeed a light in the darkness, by which we can find our way.
by Georgianna
My daughters and I love fiction—especially stories that have happy endings. Our life with their father and my husband, Ted, had been so happy and blissful. So much so, that if God said to me, “I am going to allow a painful crisis in your family, and all of you will suffer,” I would calmly reply, “Okay, Father, let Your will be done.” We could handle anything together.
On May 13, 2011, our youngest daughter, Jane, had an accident. She tipped backward in her seat and fell, hitting her head on the hardwood floor. I assessed her immediately, as a trained infant and pediatric nurse practitioner. She showed no signs of injury. My sister, also a nurse practitioner, agreed that she appeared healthy.
We took Jane to her scheduled pediatrician’s visit on May 16, 2011. I told the doctor what had happened, and he thought it would be prudent to obtain a skull X-ray. We took Jane to the children’s hospital, where the X-ray revealed a skull fracture. A CT scan confirmed that there were no other complications. I obviously felt terrible, and had many questions, but we were comforted and assured by the medical staff. We praised God all the way home for protecting Jane from more severe injuries.
A week later, I was home alone with Anne, Paige, and Jane. Suddenly, there were police detectives and Child Protective Services (CPS) workers at our house. They had come to investigate a report of “severe child abuse.” Their questions were shocking, accusatory, and confusing. Even more appalling, my daughters witnessed it all.
The report of “severe child abuse” came from a new doctor at the hospital who only viewed the X-ray, and made the report to CPS based on nothing more. Because Jane was under twelve months old, the report was automatically classified as a criminal case.
All three of our daughters were removed from our custody.
There was no evidence of abuse, past or present, in any of our children. There were no risk factors for abuse in our family. There were no previous injuries in any of our children. Every medical professional who actually examined Jane and spoke with our family ruled out the possibility of abuse.
In spite of the truth, our family was torn apart, and was not reunited until nine months later. Ted and I were not allowed to live in the same house as our girls, so we were forced to move out, and were allowed only supervised visitation.
I will never forget the first night away from our daughters. I was raging, crying out to God, screaming in agony. Then something powerful happened. A calmness and warmth spread through me. I was suddenly aware that God was right there, holding me, raging with me at the injustice, weeping with us, His children. In that moment, I had never felt more protected in all my life.
I certainly did not remain one hundred percent trusting or peaceful over the following nine months. Every second felt like evil persecution. Our children were suffering. I was being falsely accused of “severely abusing” Jane. I was also being personally and professionally attacked on many levels. I had spent over a decade working as a nurse with high-risk families. I was specifically trained to prevent child abuse and neglect.
In addition to the emotional assault on our family, we also experienced the enormous financial burden of legal defense, case-related consultations, associated medical bills, and counseling, and I wasn’t allowed to return to work since I worked with children.
So what happened to that deep, peaceful awareness of my Father’s presence and protection? It was still in me, grounding me, giving me strength to get through another day. Despite each day’s disappointments, frustrations, and sorrows, I slept soundly each night. Each morning, I thanked God for recharging me.
During the day, I frequently wrestled with God. I often brooded when He didn’t “make things right.” I was so weary of waiting for the truth to prevail. There were countless court meetings, petitions, hearings, CPS visits, police procedures, legal proceedings, rumors, expert opinions, off-the-record tips, and massive amounts of paperwork. Most of the time, I accepted the courage God was giving me to handle these daily challenges. Other times, I crumbled under the pressure. Over time, I learned that God didn’t mind how strong or weak I was on any given day. He was the same. This was the true miracle—that my family lived and survived in the fiery furnace with God’s provision, not that God ultimately rescued us from it.
We often found ourselves speaking words of hope and encouragement to others. I never, however, concealed my true feelings about what was happening or how I was struggling. God made me vulnerable enough to touch people’s hearts, but resilient enough to testify about His provision. Many said, “If that happened to me, I would fall apart; I wouldn’t survive; My anger would make me do something regrettable. But you are so strong, so faithful, so patient!” Every time someone said this, I felt a spark of joy, because I loved being God’s instrument. I did feel all of those awful and hopeless emotions, but God was strong for me. I did fall apart, often, but God always put me back together. I did relish the thought of revenge at times, but God replaced my bitterness with mercy. God was the patient One, not me!
We finally made it to Juvenile Court trial. Although it was technically a criminal investigation as well, the police had performed many investigative procedures, and since they never uncovered any evidence against us, we were never charged criminally. The judge was respected as a fair and objective judge by all. The CPS attorney had the opposite reputation. While on the stand, I often felt hurt, angry, annoyed, defeated, tricked, betrayed, and helpless, but the whole time I could feel God with me, fighting for me. After the third day of trial, once Ted and I were alone, I cried, “Thank you, God, for the privilege of this suffering, for being with us in it, and for shining through us during this suffering. . . .”
On the fourth day, the judge made a declaration that astonished everyone. He dismissed the entire case as unfounded—without even hearing our defense. I whispered “thank You,” over and over. Our attorney said to us, “This isn’t my victory, or your victory. This is God’s victory. Thank Him, not me.”
When the battle was over, there were battle wounds that needed tending. Initially, we were so relieved and overjoyed by freedom that we did not anticipate the emotional task ahead. Despite the reunification of our family, our daughters continued to suffer the effects of our crisis.
Ted and I also faced some symptoms of post-traumatic stress, but even so, the predominant mood in our home was relief. We felt peace and joy with fresh intensity. I felt a renewed sense of awe and gratitude for the gift of my children. It was amazing how the lingering hurt coexisted with the delight, how our grieving was simultaneous with our healing.
February 2013 marked only the one-year anniversary of our trial. The most powerful facilitation to our recovery has been forgiveness. I think injustice is very difficult to forgive. Personally, it would have been impossible to forgive without God’s intervention.
After our exoneration, my family attempted repeatedly to contact the children’s hospital that ignited the whole ordeal. The chief of staff finally agreed to a meeting with the physician who reported us. Our intention was to have a collegial discussion about the events, in an effort to prevent similar harm to other families.
I recounted every appalling detail of our family’s experience to the chief of staff and the head of Child Abuse Pediatrics (the one who reported us). As I spoke, I felt confident and calm, never angry or bitter.
When I finished, the chief of staff apologized, saying, “Mistakes were made, and I am very sorry for what your family had to go through.” Then the physician who made the misdiagnosis of child abuse echoed the same apology.
When we were leaving the office, I hugged the doctor who had reported us. Trust me, I did not feel like showing love to that person, but God did. That was the most powerful healing and reconciliation I have ever experienced. God changed me in that moment, more than He had changed me through the entire tribulation. He miraculously changed my perspective—I suddenly saw myself in this flawed woman facing me. How many mistakes have I made in my life? How many people have I hurt, intentionally or unintentionally? How many times have I allowed pride to prevent me from doing the right thing? How, after all, was I different from my accuser?
I believe our story does have a happy ending, but the truth is, our story is never-ending. And I praise God that He is still writing chapters of my life. My family and I are humbly grateful for the suffering our Father endured with us. Without it, we would be comfortably living our “old normal,” instead of courageously living our “new normal.”