Glory in the ‘No’
When my husband died, it felt like my life shattered into a thousand tiny pieces. Like a beautiful crystal vase that is dropped by clumsy hands onto a hard and unyielding floor, the life I’d known was over and not coming back. The pieces were too fragmented to ever be restored. My life from that moment on would have to be something different. I would be someone different.
When life shatters, faith can shatter with it. So often, the death of a loved one begins the slow death of faith. Where trust may have been easy before, it now feels terrifying. Death seems to loom everywhere and new questions flit across our minds: Where was God? Why didn’t he stop it? Why would a good Heavenly Father allow something so horrible to take place? Does he even care? Who will he take from me next?
We try to reconcile all that we thought we knew about God with what we have experienced and sometimes it just doesn’t seem to fit. We might’ve been told that people who follow God experience blessings in life - but we followed Him and received death instead. Maybe others admonished us to trust God more or pray with stronger faith - and we tried. But our prayers weren’t answered and we ended up standing beside a freshly dug grave. Maybe we thought that if we held up our end of the bargain, if we were good enough for God, He would save us from suffering. Instead, we have been crushed while others who don’t even try to follow God still have their beloved by their side.
We want God to show up in our lives in blessings: curing cancer, eradicating mental illness, or preventing senseless accidents. We want to see his glory through victory. We are ready to tell the world about his goodness if only he will do what we ask. What we wouldn’t give for our trial to be over and for God to be the hero of the story! But instead our arms are empty, our beloved is in the grave, and our dreams float away like ash in our hands. We are left with more questions than answers. Wounded and disappointed, we are tempted to walk away from God, leaving our faith behind in the rubble of the life we used to have.
Those of us who have walked through the death of a spouse and come out on the other side with our faith intact still find it changed in undeniable ways. New questions have surfaced, new pain stings, and many of us struggle to pray. God answered our most important prayers with a resounding “No.” We wonder if there’s even a point to praying anymore. All of these questions and struggles are normal in grief, but the normalcy doesn’t make them any easier. At the same time, we’ve experienced God in new ways that are only revealed through suffering. God hasn’t shown up how we wanted, but he has indeed shown up. Our new experiences with him can even lead to deeper faith and worship.
St. Augustine once said, “In my deepest wound I saw your glory, and it dazzled me.” These are words worth pondering. Have we seen his glory in the midst of our deepest wounds? Has seeing God in our pain dazzled us the way it dazzled St. Augustine.
Throughout the Bible, God reveals himself to his people in their darkest moments. Hagar, rejected and certain that she and her son are about to perish, experiences God as “the one who sees me.” Elijah, hunted down by the infamously evil Queen Jezebel, experiences the glory of God not in the mighty storm or powerful earthquake, but in silent stillness and the simple provision of a meal. A woman caught in adultery, about to be stoned to death by her accusers, experiences the glory of God’s forgiveness in a word scribbled in the sand.
I too have experienced God’s unmistakable glory in my darkest moments. In those times of desperation and fear, prayer was impossible, no Bible verses came to mind, and time seemed to stand still while my mind reeled with shock over what I was witnessing. Yet God’s presence - His glory - was unmistakable.
The first time I experienced this was sitting in my then-fiance’s hospital room. He had been life-flighted after a series of cardiac arrests that he barely survived and now he lay before me, sedated and barely recognizable underneath all the wires and tubes. I was 21 and terrified. Never before had I felt so small or so alone. Everything within me wanted to run away from the nightmare unfolding before me but it was as if I could almost feel God’s hand upon me - holding me, reassuring me that He hadn’t left me to face it alone. The comfort of his presence is something I clung to afterwards when scary diagnoses hinted at more suffering to come.
Many years later, I would look back at the night my husband died and see so clearly that God had been with us through it all. It was terrifying and felt chaotic, but looking back I could see unmistakable signs of Him with us. There were moments and details woven together that could have only happened by the hand of a Sovereign God who knew my husband intimately and loved us deeply. On that day I received the final “No” to years of praying that God would heal him. Instead of receiving the miracle I wanted, I experienced the presence of God. I was not rescued out of my pain, but I was held by God’s quiet, steady presence. He carried me through and showed His glory through His sustaining grace.
Those moments have become like an anchor in my soul. I do not know what life will bring and it is easy to fear so much after losing your spouse. But I can look back on my worst moments and see how God carried me through them and has been carrying me every moment since. I can trust what He promised in Deuteronomy 31:8, “ The LORD himself goes before you and will be with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged.”
In Christ,
