Matters of Strength

I had a conversation with a dear friend a couple of weeks ago. She was distressed over a particular hardship her family is challenged with. She said she sometimes gets angry with God that someone she loves has to go through such hard things, even if it strengthens all of them to be better people. I have been thinking about our conversation a lot lately as I watch those around me dealing with their struggles. Another friend almost lost her darling daughter who was giving birth and lost half her body's blood. She said she didn't know what she would do if anything happened to any of her children. The next day we welcomed our beautiful twentieth grandchild under perfect circumstances. Another of my friends prays for her youngest son who is fighting a brain tumor, his fourth bout with cancer, and awaits her husband's open-heart surgery in a couple of weeks.

All of us deal with trials, tragedies, suffering, and heartache. At this point in my life I am finally developing an eternal perspective. I look at my Cameron and know that he will be whole in the resurrection. He is who he is. Would I change him? I used to think people were lying if they said they would never change their special-needs child, but now I can see Cameron's mission in this life as a ministry to the rest of us. He makes us better people--all of us. I think of the song from My Turn on Earth, "You can never know the good if you've never known the bad; You can never be happy if you've never been sad. You have to know the bitter so that you can taste the sweet; You have to be hungry to be glad you can eat..."

If we could choose, most of us would never have anyone we love experience pain or loss. We would have all of our children be perfect--beautiful, brilliant, popular, happy, healthy, and untouched by broken marriages, lost jobs, or financial struggles. The funny thing is that none of us can become who God wants us to be if nothing in life causes us to stretch, question, search for answers, forgive, heal, and learn. I want the kind of strength that will make my children become the best they can be, and in order for them to do that, they will have scrapes and bruises along the way.

I remember the day my grandparents stopped by our house on the way home from Island Park to the disasterous news that my mother, their beautiful, 39-year-old daughter, had slipped from this life suddenly and unexpectedly. I remember their tears and their lamentations that no parents should ever have to bury a child. It was a hard time, but it was the start of a testimony-building time for all of us. We became stronger, better, and more faithful. It was not what any of us would have chosen. We have an eternal perspective that we are a family forever. Now my grandparents and my dad have joined my mother, and through the losses and pain I've come to understand better Heavenly Father's plan for me--and for my children and grandchildren. I can understand Cameron's purpose. I can understand a little more why it is important to learn through trials.

They say that if everyone hung his trails out on the clothesline, they would gather their own back in at the end of the day. "Teach me all that I must BE to live with Him someday."