I Followed Jesus But My Life Didn't Get Better
From the Archives | Finding God's goodness beyond the promise of better days
At age five, my mother led me to pray the “sinner’s prayer” in the back of her white Nissan Sentra. The corner of my eyes caught glimpses of the blue doors and pillars of my elementary school as I tried to keep them closed.
“Dear God, I know I’m a sinner. I know you died and rose again for my sins. Please come into my heart and be my saviour.”
I spoke each word after my mom, and at the end, she nodded at me in approval. In my child-like heart, I knew only that to accept Jesus was to open a gateway to heaven, and if that was where my leukemia-stricken father was going, I needed to find a way there too. Because even then, I knew death meant a forever separation, a much longer one than those taking my parents away for hospital stays in another city.
Being the conservative strict types, my parents inundated me with Christian-related stories, books, and films. They centered around themes of faith and hope, the explicit and implicit message that believing in Jesus would make everything in life work out for the better. When my dad went into remission six years after his diagnoses, my six-year-old self thanked God and believed in Him as a miracle-worker.
I memorized Romans 8:28 from a young age, holding onto it as a talisman: “…in all things God works for the good of those who love him…” Proverbs promised a good life for followers of Christ. I watched “Facing the Giants” with my family, moved by the line, “I will still love you,” after disappointing news, following which, the character got what she wanted after all.
Of course, there were the other verses promising trials in life too, but in all fairness, I figured at some point I would always be able to look back and inscribe some sort of meaning to it.
Morning to night, I devoted myself to following Christ: studying Scripture, attending church, praying. From childhood, I knew the world to be cruel, but what was suffering when my God promised He was good? Everything would turn out fine. Someday I would understand. God’s ways were not my ways, but He was the good father who gives good gifts to His children.
And then life turned out to be quite the opposite of what I’d been led to believe.
In fact, it got progressively worse.
Cancer. Physical abuse. Emotional abuse. Sexual abuse. Spiritual abuse.
And the church had no satisfactory answers to these deeper aspects of suffering.
Eventually, I got married to a godly man. We gave our lives to serving orphans and other at-risk children, and finally adopted a child together. I thought, finally the rest of my life will be easy. I deserve it by now.
But shortly after, we had four miscarriages, one after the other over the span of one year.
When situations seemed to line up for us to adopt a teenager with severe medical and mental health needs, I thought to myself, Ah, now I understand why those losses had to happen. Now it makes sense.
As we counted down the days until we could bring him home, we repeated truths to each other:
“God has a plan and we can trust it.”
But then he passed away too, suddenly, traumatically. It was three days before we would have traveled to pick him up.
His death could have been prevented, had someone cared. No one did. A young life was lost for no reason, and I grieved that child so much, I wondered how I could feel such pain and still live.
None of it made sense. None of it seemed good.
I’ve since abandoned trying to make sense of suffering.
“You are mine and I am yours, forever.”
Yet before this child was mine, he was the Lord’s. He entrusted him to me: undeserving, hopelessly flawed, me. Through such love as I could give, he came to know Christ. As the waves of grief crash over me, threaten to overwhelm my sanity and peace, I am certain of the eternal promise, that all who call on Jesus’ name are granted the gift of life.
Yet even in this, of this I am sure: that God is good. Even if I never understand, if He allowed this to happen, it was for our good.
Not all trials have a lesson. Not all reasons can be known. Not all losses are redeemed on this broken side of eternity. Like Job, I may never know why.
In moments of despair, I have called upon Him—desperately, demandingly. “Jesus, you promised me your peace (John 14:27). Give me what you promised.”
And always, He has given.
My questions of why injustice and suffering exist have never been answered. Yet I found what I was looking for all along: God Himself.
God is good and He loves me. This is all I know. I can believe that. I can trust that.
Nothing else matters.
Dear Inklings,
This essay is republished from the archives and was my very first post for this newsletter. I almost never write explicitly about my faith here, though my hope is you are able to sense the spirit behind my writing. It has been, and always will be, an integral part of who I am.
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With Love,
