Every Bitter Thing Is Sweet: Tasting the Goodness of God in All Things

by Sara Hagerty

Like most pain, until you have known it for yourself, you are blind to it.

And it was the question (and its hidden assumptions) I was learning had to be brought into my conversation with God if I would ever find life through barrenness.

But I was full on the inside, finding a rhythm of using the pain of my outside circumstances — such as the sting from the shower — to drive me deeper into this secret conversation with God.

I felt forgotten, but I heard God speak that He had not left me. I felt weak, but I heard Him promise an overshadowing. I felt anxious that my constant fumblings would annoy Him, but I heard Him say He delighted in me.

Pain had created space. Space to want more. Space to taste a sense of being alive. An alive that would grow to be my favorite kind of alive: secret, hidden to all eyes but mine and those nearest to me.

Little did I know that I was to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.

Caleb met fatherly love for the first time when he met Nate, the kind of love in which you could wrap yourself and find healing by its very nearness.

The umbilical cord stretched over a wide ocean but was there, nonetheless. The Father had forged a connection, even before our eyes stared into theirs.

God had known us as “us” since the beginning of time.

I had grown to know God when no one was looking and when life still wasn’t “working” as I’d suspected it should. There, He was the God who saw me and knew me and reveled in what He knew. That understanding, as it worked its way into my insides, though not my circumstances, steadied me.

His unraveling of me began.

God was big enough for me to pattern my time into telling others about Him, but not real enough for me to find any delight in Him.

It was as if somewhere in the recesses of my mind I believed that if I kept pouring out externally, I wouldn’t need to face any internal rifts in my heart.

I had spent years in a desert, familiar with its dryness and assuming it was just part of what it means to be a follower of Jesus, but in that desert came a drop of water.

Nate would both cradle and kill.

I made feeble attempts to convince him that my narrow way was our way and God’s way and the only way.

The hardest part would be letting go not just in front of God but alongside the human husband who was himself learning to let go.

God impacting us, the kind of impact that happens behind closed doors.

I had developed a habit of freely pouring love into the unlovely outside of my home. I had little left for the one with whom I’d linked arms to change the world. My concept of love wasn’t broad enough to consider my participation in the changing of his world.

My mess wouldn’t forever be a curse. One day it would be my crown. One day it would tell the story that, yes, He is good . . . to me.

But God wasn’t sitting back, fearful that I would suddenly cash in on this gift as a lifestyle and become a spendthrift instead of a fervent follower of Him. He wanted to show me Himself as the Father who gives gifts to His children. This scenario wasn’t setting me up for materialism; it was deconstructing my misconception of Him as a tightfisted Father, someone who is concerned only with my getting life “right.”

His call, here, was louder than the life for which I’d begun to fantasize. The same God-man looked different than He had to me even one week before. He was my opportunity, not my dead end.

Years of vacancy now felt like opulence.

“We’ll dance on this,” I said. “This isn’t our darkest hour but our best.” I spoke words I’d only just begun to believe for myself and was surprised to hear myself say them. It was as if speaking them reinforced my belief in them.

I saw more clearly the disconnection between who I said God is and who I believed Him to be. I saw that pain wasn’t a result of my circumstances; pain was a result of my detachment from the Father. Circumstances were merely unearthing my view of life.

It was adoration — practicing, trying it out, seeing what it looked like in my life — that led me to this new perspective on God. It led me to a Father who longs not merely to be served but also to be known. Who longs for us, His creation, to know the cadence of His heartbeat.

As had been true through most of our marriage, we rode the teeter-totter. This time, he was down and I was up. So many times it had been the reverse. But in those months, the me who had been so inclined toward fear knew peace. And so we each walked in new places, neither better nor worse than the other. Both creatively spun by God.

Adoration makes walking with God more than just reacting to a series of externals. Adoration calls the circumstances, no matter how high or low, into proper submission in our hearts. Adoration roots us in a reality that no amount of pain and no amount of blessing can shake. Adoration steadies us. It repatterns our thinking. It centers our lives around a God-man instead of forever trying to make sense of the God-man through the lenses of our circumstances. Adoration aligns us under Him. This is the place where life is found.

I had developed a habit of fixing my eyes on what Nate was not, instead of seeing the strength of God inside of him.

I began to speak words I couldn’t feel until they were said, out loud. I affirmed. I called forth who Nate is, the Nate whom no one but God and I had seen. It was this night that Nate let me into the parts of him that were weak and insecure so that I might, this time, be the hand that held those wounds. This was the night I administered a love I’d only just begun to know.

I didn’t just affirm; I partnered with the Father to heal.

I was beginning to conclude that that void wasn’t really a mommy void at all.

I struggled, instead, with knowing that God could heal me, but He hadn’t.

This moment had a work to do, and God multiplied what little time I had to receive it.

My inability to respond with trust, to lean, to rest peacefully in what God could do, but hadn’t done, exposed me.

Instead of saying, Show me Yourself as Healer, I asked, Why haven’t You healed me? Instead of saying, Show me the Daddy side of You, I asked, Why aren’t You Daddy to me? Instead of saying, Show me Yourself as Comforter of those in pain, I asked, Why all the pain?

My questions revealed my resistance to the vulnerability God loves.

But God wants me to know the nearness of Him in response to the deepest questions of my story, the kind of nearness that, when realized, heals.

At times it’s easier to accept a diagnosis than to believe He can heal. To know Him as Healer requires me to be always asking. To know Him as Healer requires me to stay, longer than I’d like to, as one in need of healing.

One long conversation, not interrupted by adversity but enhanced by it.

This preemptive boundary was not healthy, or necessary, but I was wounded, and the wounded set up provisions for their comfort.

My figurative position of confidence before Him, as a daughter in whom He delighted, was one long exhalation of relief. I didn’t earn this position; I inherited it, and that made my safety all the more secure, no matter His response. The ability He gave me to ask started, first, with Him.

We were choosing His storyline over our circumstances, having had a small taste that circumstances look a whole lot different when He overshadows.

This happenstance didn’t register as rare until I climbed onto their bus with one child on my hip and another child’s hand wrapped in mine. (This was the bus they “weren’t sure why” they felt they needed to rent that morning, and the only vehicle that could have carried all of us.) I hadn’t even had time to shed tears over our delay before God had provided a response.

It wasn’t my effort and His. It was His effort and my weak yes. It was partnership, done His way.

It had always been safer to expect that God allows suffering in the interest of refinement. While I still believe this is a significant aspect of His nature, Uganda had given me the chance to discover new frontiers of His generosity. For He also allows joy.

Endurance was producing character. Character was becoming hope.

If He is healer to me, restorer of all that is broken, I will see her not by her present loss, her forever fragmentation, but as Sarah. As one promised. As one chosen to carry His seal.

My motherhood wasn’t the source of my discomfort, and my children weren’t its cause. My heart was detached. This was not a new truth, just a new setting in which it was revealed. I was detached from Him, here.

I was believing the great lie of motherhood (which is likely the great lie of any busy life): I’ll find Him when life slows down or this burden lifts or my present struggle no longer nips at my heels. Even if I didn’t express those words, my actions and thoughts showed that I thought they were true.