LostInOhio

Your story resonates with me. I lost my 30 year old, pregnant wife just nine months after our wedding. I remember sitting beside her in the pews at our church, holding her as we cried. She knew she was dying to the incredibly aggressive cancer at work in her body. Of all days to go to church, it happened to be a Baptism day. The parents sang a song about how Blessed by God they were, while my baby and wife were literally dying beside me. I cried for the next 24 hours. How can we not be angry at God? I remember, once, how I could rationalize evil in the world. Bad things happen, but not to ME. God is Good, and He blesses me — I always went to church and thanked God for his many Blessings upon me. He, the Almighty, the Healer, wouldn’t let such terrible things happen to me and my loved ones. And then it did. For me, my understanding of God has drastically changed. Because *I* know, beyond any doubt, that my wife, baby and I didn’t deserve what happened. There is no “reason” this happened — a GOOD God, a GOOD parent, could never justify such suffering for a “greater good.” That’s just something people tell themselves to justify it when it happens to someone else. So why didn’t he heal her? For me, the only possibility is that God doesn’t heal anyone in our time. He doesn’t arbitrarily choose to bless some and curse others. He doesn’t give one family children, and take mine away. If He did, if He even chose to save one person, He could no longer possibly be Good in my eyes — and therefore would not be God. And yet I do believe in God. I love Him. The only times I ever truly felt his presence is during the many coincidences that led me to my wife. I felt, beyond any doubt, that God wanted us to be together and that I was supposed to marry my wife. And because He did, I was able to have the best years (before marriage included) of my life with her. To make her feel loved and comforted before this unspeakably terrible thing happened. All I can conclude is that God will not directly interfere with our lives, but is always there listening, trying to help us make the best choices possible in this broken world. And maybe, just maybe, death isn’t as bad as we think it is, and she’s there waiting on me. Because THAT is God’s promise — not that he will heal us in this life, but that there is something after this life. I spend my evenings at the cemetery, gazing at the plaque that contains both of our names. It comforts me to know that No Matter What, I know the End: I am going to be placed beside my wife, the greatest person I’ve ever met, forever. And, if not for God, I would never have existed and gotten to know her in the first place. And that makes me thankful, not angry. Don’t misunderstand me, I still cry every day and pray to God I die young too, but this was how I moved away from the anger.