When Tragedy Strikes

When tragedy strikes, what do you do? Where do you turn? Where does your hope come from?

Last week a young girl from our church in Quitman passed away after a tragic car accident involving FFA students traveling to an event in San Antonio.  A beautiful, spunky, full of life and love girl who has any amazing family, is home with Jesus now.  She loved the Lord with all of her heart.  Her older sister was just a wee junior high girl when Justin and I first moved to Quitman, and was the first girl I got to know at youth camp that year.

Her mother posted this about her... The Afters: Light up the Sky.

My heart has been heavy since I heard the news about the accident.  It seems that I cannot get her family off of my mind. So I pray.

And then this week as I've been doing my BSF lessons on Isaiah, I am blown away by God and the timing of a particular part of the lesson and what we are learning through these scriptures.  One of the main things I am learning through the study of Isaiah is about God's character.  He alone is God. His plans are perfect. He constantly desires for us to have a deep relationship with Him.  And He allows things to happen in our lives so that we will turn to Him and cling to Him. For without Him there is no hope. There is no redemption without Him.

And when tragedy or hardship or circumstances that are just plain cruddy happen in our lives, HE is there, to guide us, offer peace, and He is the only one strong enough for us to cling to.

And then, you know what He does... if we let Him... He uses our pain, our heartache, and the things we learned as we went through that hard time to help someone else down the road. Or He uses the tragedy at the time, to bring others into an awareness of Him.

One of the darkest moments in my own life was when we lost our first baby when I was 12 weeks pregnant.  It was as if the breath had been sucked out of me and I couldn't breathe. The child we were so excited to meet, the dreams of what he/she would look like, and the dreams of our future as a family of 3 were gone.  Christ was my ROCK during that darkness. I clung to Him in the weeks and months that followed.  Even though I was heartbroken, wondering why, I knew that His plans for our lives were perfect.  He comforted me during those days with a comfort that I cannot describe.

I am not glad to have experienced a miscarriage, the loss of a child, but I am thankful for what I learned through it; and I am thankful for how my relationship with my Lord was strengthened and how my trust and love in Him grew.  And since that time, God has used that tragedy in my life to help others going through the same thing.  I am thankful He allowed me to go through that so I could understand and comfort others with the comfort I had already received from God.

C.S. Lewis says this, "God whispers in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but SHOUTS in our pain; it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.