When “good” just doesn’t feel like it.

I’ve thought a lot about God’s goodness over the past few months.  Add that to the varying perspectives that folks have lovingly shared with me since having a miscarriage back in the fall, and I’ve experienced quite a few personal wrestling matches regarding this subject on the mats of my brain.

Here’s the reality.  I’m cautious this time around, pregnancy-wise.  Am I excited about the possibility of holding a brand new healthy baby boy or girl in my arms sometime in early February?  Absolutely.  But can I squeeze that mental picture tight, holding onto it as though it was a promise made to me?  Honestly, no.  In fact, I’m finding it difficult to fully embrace this “future” without holding back some of my heart... just in case.  Yeah, I know.  This is not attractive.  Some may even say “not trusting.”  But here’s where I struggle.  God has not promised in some obscure portion of His Word that “all my dreams will come true.”  He has not guaranteed ease in this life.  Painlessness either, for that matter.  And so as I look toward what I long for, there is this sense of caution, worry that it could be taken away in a moment of “let your light shine bright” in the midst of the most painful of circumstances.  

And then I have to face it, “it” being the Truth that everything I love, everyONE I love, could be taken away... and at any moment, too.  No?  Then check out Job.  Or Stephen (Acts 7).   Or Jesus‘ “Blessed are the”s in His sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:3-12).  I have not been promised security in an earthly sense of the word.  

My sole, and I mean SOLE security is in my position as co-heir with Christ (Romans 8:17)... that at the end of my lifetime, be it full of happiness or heartache, I will finally experience true, complete JOY in that eternity where there will be no more mourning, no more pain, no more flesh.  And honestly, that’s the only future True enough to hold onto for dear life.  

So here I am in the middle, having not yet reached that destination of heaven, but headed in that direction.  With His work of sanctification in full swing, I hope to see the Spirit’s clarifying of how I view “goodness.”  Is the Lord good?  I can’t put that on the scales to measure based on my unmet desires and disappointed dreams.  I have to go back to the cross.  Is what happened in that redemptive hour when He rose from the grave enough to call Him ever and always good?  And before you or I yelp out our Sunday school answer of “yes!”, we must really, truly wrestle with it.  Can we still declare Him “Good!” even if our lives crumble to the ground as Job’s home did with his children inside?  Because if we can’t, then I don’t know that we have fully accepted the significance of our sin or the divinely redemptive qualities of our Lord on the cross.  

And while I eat yet another piece of humble pie, I look to His grace.  I fall back on the ever-refining Spirit dwelling in me, the one who recognizes my weaknesses and intercedes on my behalf.  May these eyes look less with squinted hesitation and more with hope and trust to the One who took my punishment before I had ever recognized the need for it.  And may He change my cautious praise into unrestrained gratitude, regardless of what tomorrow brings.  

“The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away.  Blessed be the name of the Lord!” Job 1:21