What Unexpected Thing is Actually Happening in Pain & Suffering?

“When grief’s deepest, words are fewest, so that His presence & withness can speak love the clearest. “

Even the smallest reaches of kindness can begin to break through the tenderest kinds of brokenness.

When the sun dawns over our farm fields the day right after the fire, Levi & Aurora, our son & daughter-in-love, sit across from us at our old barn beam table, and there isn’t one of us that’s slept that much.

I offer Aurora a cup of coffee but what I’m desperate to do is just about anything to take away the stunned, sad ache in her eyes. 

When grief’s deepest, words are fewest, so that His presence and withness can speak love the clearest. 

“What if Jesus doesn’t alway take away our pain, because that would take away a door to access the heart of the Way Himself, that can’t be experienced any other way? “

 Aurora’s eyes meet mine … and I gently nod, wanting nothing more than to reach over and just gather her up. Nothing breaks your heart quite like watching the breaking of the hearts of people you love.

What I want to do is take away their pain — like I would have taken away Hagar’s pain too, which would have taken away her getting to name God, whom she got to experience as the God who sees. 

Like I would have taken away David’s pain too, which would have taken him away from getting to be a man with a heart like God’s, whose own divine heart has experienced deep suffering and loss. 

Like I would have taken away Elijah’s pain too, which would have taken away him getting to be fed and sustained by God, who can be tasted as otherworldly goodness, in unexpected darkness, that can’t be experienced any other way. 

Levi hands me down his own coffee cup. We all have our cups to take up. 

“What if Jesus removed every calamity and cross we’ve ever had to carry – would we then be following Him only just for comfort and convenience, rather than for intimate communion with Him, the One who carried a Cross too?“

What if Jesus doesn’t alway take away our pain, because that would take away a door to access the heart of the Way Himself, that can’t be experienced any other way? 

What if Jesus removed every calamity and cross we’ve ever had to carry – would we then be following Him only just for comfort and convenience, rather than for intimate communion with Him, the One who carried a Cross too?

What if we are most interested in God taking away pain — when God is more interested in giving to us in the midst of pain? What if there is more than taking away pain; what if God is about giving a way to be raised up through pain?

What if God’s more than a taker — but is actually more of a Giver?

Is there any word more powerful than giving? Thanksgiving. Forgiving. Care-giving. Kind giving. Life-giving. Everything that’s about giving surely leads to fuller living.  

“There are times that  instead of God taking away painful loss, God is the Giver who gives ways to experience presence and love through the loss. “

When Mrs. Bouma heard about the fire, she, first thing, sorted through clothes and boxes and housewares to put together a generous care package and then sent her kind Dutch husband, the village optometrist, on a drive through the countryside and right up our farm lane before we were even finished breakfast, so Aurora & Levi might have a few more shirts than just only the ones on their backs. 

Sue Nelson, and her fine husband, Mike, had the ministry of soup and they showed up on the porch with steaming crocks and loaves of bread to make sure we were all well-fed, and Mrs. Martin, our thoughtful neighbour at the farm next door, she came in right after, with the gift of a big 9 by 13 dish of lasagne.  Sue Nelson’s soup tastes like grace. The last of Mrs. Martin’s lasagne is eaten straight out of the pan. Where suffering is shared, communion is tasted. 

When community comes to sit with you in your fire, it’s all kinds of hopelessness that gets extinguished. 

Everyone needs someone to be with them in the burn, because that can turn flames into a burning bush of holy presence.

Pain may not be taken away, but His presence is tenderly given. Ache might not be erased, but angels of ministering grace are daily dispatched to attend to you.

The smoke’s still rising from the wreckage when the town florist generously flings open their doors and invites the whole community to come in for cut flowers and every penny of the proceeds across the two days, they offer to donate to Levi and Aurora, who’s one of their very own bouquet makers. And it’s the very men and women of the local volunteer fire department, who’d all valiantly fought the blaze in that brutal northwest wind, who come into the town florist to pick up bunches of tulips and daffodils and snapdragons. And then those same volunteer firefighters turned around and gave their bouquets to other firefighter families who were marking their own painful losses. 

There are times that  instead of God taking away painful loss, God is the Giver who gives ways to experience presence and love through the loss. 

Pain may not be taken away, but His presence is tenderly given.

Ache might not be erased, but angels of ministering grace are daily dispatched to attend to you.

And your cross may not be lifted, but Jesus comes to be the lifter of your chin, and to co-bear the weight and ache, and this cross that He gives gives the gift of making our hearts shaped more like Christ who is Love Himself. 

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Your cross may not be lifted, but Jesus comes to be the lifter of your chin, and to co-bear the weight and ache, and this cross that He gives gives the gift of making our hearts shaped more like Christ who is Love Himself. 

Mrs. Van Sligtenhorst brings an old glass bottle she found during the renovations of her old house, for Aurora to maybe dip her paint brushes in. Before she goes, she slips into Aurora’s hand too, a wooden spoon she carved from a broken branch in her orchard, for Aurora to hold in her own hands the repurposing of brokenness, for her to imagine stirring soup at her stove someday again soon, and there are countless ways to loan hurting folks sure hope.

When we come to be with someone in their fire, the Other who comes into the fire with us is no less than the holy presence of the Shekinah who fights fire with fire, who fights the fire of loss with the holy fire of love. 

When we brave entering into someone’s fire, we torch the dark and  set despair ablaze. 

And when we enter into someone’s fire, we do more than  just bring the Shekinah blaze of God’s love into the flames– we ourselves enter into the mystery of experiencing the igniting heat of Love Himself. Because “whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for Me” (Matt. 25:40). Which is to say: When we give, we get God. 

When we enter into the grief and mystery of someone’s burn,  we not only give the presence of God, but we get to experience the mystery of the presence of God Himself too.

When we sit with anyone in their burn, we sit with God Himself and how can our hearts not burn within us? 

God is committed to being more than just the taker of pain, He’s vowed to be the Giver of a greater blaze: He gives a Shekinah flame of love that no dark could ever put out. 

Once you dare to take the broken way, to stay with the broken in their fire, to daily give forward even in your own brokenness, through your own flames, your broken heart is enlightened—it becomes light.

God is committed to being more than just the taker of pain, He’s vowed to be the Giver of a greater blaze: He gives a Shekinah flame of love that no dark could ever put out. 

Shiloh shyly slips up beside me in the kitchen, with a bag in hand, and she cups her hand to whisper soft and warm at my ear — “Can I give Aurora all my new paints and brushes from Christmas?”

And I kiss the dear child’s forehead and, in the 4th week of Lent, the ash and trauma of Levi and Aurora’s blazed house hasn’t yet been taken away, but grace and love and community and compassion have been given in abundance, and even in the midst of it, the rising begins even now. 

The Lord who gives life, He gives grace, gives mercy, gives hope, gives His body, gives community, gives love, gives Himself. Less than a taker, God is infinitely more a Giver….

From a cup of deep sadness, you can still taste the deep joy of the Lord. 

The warmth of the sun surely keeps rising.

thank you … it doesn’t seem like enough, but please know how deeply we mean those two words…

From our family to yours… just… beyond words…  moved beyond words…thank-you…

Absolutely hushed and flattened with gratitude, with grateful love to each of you... how you have loved our family and Levi and Aurora, who have moved in with us in the wake of burning down of their home, and we are stunned and undone with thanksgiving… Each of you — your withness, with us, and your witness, for us — means more than you can ever imagine & what holds us together through trauma, is each of you being the hands and feet of Jesus to our family. We can never thank God enough for each of you  — truly…

Last night, after making bouquets in at the town florist, Aurora sat under the warm glow of a lamp here at the farm, and, with a heart overflowing with gratitude, she painted this for each of you, a little free printable, as a card or a print, or as a bookmark for your own journeys, as the smallest token of all of our deepest thanks for all your love… with all of our love.

Free downloadable printable for each of your here, with all of our grateful love, from the bottom of our hearts