Lies in Grief: God Failed Me

Welcome back to our Lies in Grief series. During this series, we’ve covered lies about our bodies, our sin, our blame, our faith and our worthiness to grieve when it comes to baby loss. This final week in our series, we will tackle lies about God’s character that arise in our grief, and learn how to hold fast to His goodness when our hearts are broken.

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In previous weeks, I shared about how we can falsely conclude our sin or our prayer life are to blame for our babies’ deaths. If you are resolved that it’s not your fault your baby died, it would be easy to look at the flip side of the situation and assume: “well, if it wasn’t me, it must be God. God failed me. Either He couldn’t save my baby or He isn’t good and didn’t want to.”

When terrible things happen, we begin assuming things about God – that He is unable to stop them or He is unwilling to. This is actually part of an age-old debate over the existence and character of God called “The Problem of Evil”. While I won’t be addressing the debate itself, I highly recommend you wrestle with these ideas to develop a solid foundation to your faith while living in our broken world.

Lie: God couldn’t save my baby
Every one of us has limits. In difficult situations, there comes a point where we’ve done everything we can do, and our strength, wisdom, or resources simply run out. We instinctively assume everyone else has the same limitations—including God.  We can assume he was too busy with other people who have ‘more important needs’ and couldn’t get around to saving our baby, or that death is too big of a challenge for him. We can even conclude that while He made the earth and our children, what happens to us after creation is off-limits to him.

Truth: Nothing is too hard for the Lord
Friend, God can do anything He wants. Nothing is too big for him. Listen to him tell us so:  

•  Ah, Lord GOD! It is you who have made the heavens and the earth by your great power and by your outstretched arm! Nothing is too hard for you. (Jeremiah 32:17)
• With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible. (Matthew 19:26)
•  For nothing will be impossible with God. (Luke 1:37)
• He upholds the universe by the word of his power. (Hebrews 1:3)

The God who spoke galaxies into being and reigns over the stars millions of lightyears away, also reigns over all the nations on earth (Ps 47:8), knows how many hairs are on your head (Mt 10:30), and shepherds you your entire life. He also raised Himself from the dead. He can do it all. He is able. 

Lie: God didn’t want to save my baby
At this point, we might have to conclude “If God is able to save my baby, then my baby must have died because He was unwilling to save them.” While this thought could be a natural resolution to the mystery, it challenges God’s goodness and his integrity.

I remember struggling with this very thought upon William’s death. Although I couldn’t immediately sort out why I felt this way, I knew I was angry at God and refused to talk to Him. One day when my husband and I went to visit William’s gravesite, the thoughts behind my anger became clear: God betrayed me. He broke my heart. I can’t trust him anymore. Yet, if He is the only one who can heal and sustain me, what can I do? I honestly felt doomed: the only place that I knew to retreat to had become unreliable and unsafe. I had never felt such an inner crisis before.

Does this final lie of our series sound familiar to you? It’s actually one of the “oldest lies in the book”–literally. In the third chapter of the Bible, Satan as the serpent uttered the first lie to Eve in the Garden of Eden:

He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden,  but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’” But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die.  For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” Genesis 3:1-5

The first lie in history was that God was withholding good from his people. Hope Mom, I know your situation certainly might feel this way. You might be asking, “Why would he keep a good thing—a baby—from me?” It would be easy to assume that he is like humans—that there must be some ‘nongoodness’ about him: that he has ulterior motives, dangles carrots, and bait-and-switches his people. Our Enemy would certainly like us to continue on that thought path.

Truth: God’s ways and purposes are always good, even if mysterious.
In our deep pain, paralyzing confusion and shaky reality, we must be careful to never let our circumstances define God’s character. Our God is an unfathomable depth of mystery, and he is purely good. He graciously allows us to know His character and sometimes we get to see His purposes, but He never manipulates us. He also deeply loves all of His people, so much that He sent His very own child—His only one—to die for us.

So how do we reconcile our painful reality and our mysterious God? Could it be that God has not failed us, but that we are too limited to understand it all? When you think about it, who among us could ever comprehend the fullness of who He is, understand all He has done, or explain every reason behind His ways?

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. Isa 55:8-9

As Laura Story says in When God doesn’t Fix It “just because God’s plans differed from mine didn’t mean God’s plan wasn’t good, or that he wasn’t good.”

So, we are left with one thing to do: trust. We are asked to trust Him with our entire hearts, and leave our own understanding behind (Prov 3:5). While God eventually healed my faith where William is concerned, in other things I still have to often choose to believe that God is trustworthy. I have to fight lies with truth, and make a choice of faith.

Hope Mamas, these daily faith choices are not easy and not meant to be made alone. Our entire ministry exists to walk the road of faith in a broken world, together. Consider joining a Hope Group, engaging our Online Community, attending our Annual Retreat, or finding a local Chapter. We always welcome your faith questions, your broken hearts, and your need to talk about your baby.

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Resource:
Story, Laura, When God Doesn’t Fix It. Thomas Nelson: Nashville, 2015.

Kelly is the Ministry Support Lead for Hope Mommies. She and her husband Dan live in Brenham, TX with their two earthside children, Annabelle and Eli (and lots of pets). Their firstborn, William, went to Heaven in July 2017. To balance out the fullness of life, Kelly enjoys gardening, yoga, and sipping on some matcha while reading historical fiction. She considers herself beyond privileged to share the amazing news of Jesus’ Hope to all who need it, and loves that William gets to be a part of that message.