On grief, unanswered questions, and trusting God when nothing makes sense.
Saturday morning, our son Jaden sent us a message.
His friend’s mother was missing.
Her name was Jolene. We knew her from church. Her daughter had grown up around our kids. We’d served together in drama productions over the years.
I went straight to Twitter and started searching.
An air ambulance traveling from Bermuda to Boston had crashed into the ocean. Jolene was one of the nurses onboard.
At that point, the search was still active. Details were few.
And you know what your mind does in moments like that.
Maybe they’re still out there.
Maybe they’re floating somewhere, holding onto something. Maybe they’ve found a piece of the aircraft to cling to. Maybe someone will spot them.
You know the odds. But you keep hoping.
By the next morning, they’d found the wreckage.
A few hours later, the search was called off.
And just like that, hope had nowhere left to go.
I couldn’t stop thinking about her family.
And the questions.
What happened? Did they know what was happening? Was it quick? Were they afraid?
And then the question underneath all the others.
Why, God?
The woman I knew
Our church used to put on these fairly large drama productions. They were popular in our city, and I was involved in quite a few of them.
Jolene was often one of the main characters.
She was also an assistant director. She helped get people into their places, kept things moving, gave direction when it was needed, and took some of the weight off the director’s shoulders.
She’d bring donuts for everyone.
It’s funny the things you remember about people.
Not necessarily the big performances or the lines they delivered onstage.
Sometimes it’s the donuts.
The person who noticed that everyone was tired. The person who quietly helped things run smoothly. The steady hand that made everyone else’s job a little easier.
That was Jolene.
She worked as a respiratory therapist, later in our local health network, and eventually became an air ambulance nurse.
Her work took her around the world, helping transport people who needed medical care.
I was reading a Facebook tribute from someone who had worked with her. What struck me was how deeply Jolene had affected this person, and how clearly her faith had been part of that.
Think about the kind of work she did.
Day after day, encountering sickness, emergencies, suffering, and sometimes death.
The very places where people might reasonably ask, Where is God in all of this?
And somehow, from what her colleague described, Jolene carried hope into those places.
That stayed with me.
Because this week, I’m asking some of those same questions.
If You had been here
I’ve been thinking about Mary and Martha.
Their brother Lazarus had died.
They had sent word to Jesus while Lazarus was still sick. Jesus loved this family. They knew Him. They trusted Him.
And yet He didn’t arrive in time.
When Martha finally saw Him, she said:
“Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died.”
Mary would later say the same thing.
I wonder how many of us have prayed some version of that sentence.
Lord, if You had been there, that plane wouldn’t have gone down.
If You had been there, those children would still have their mother.
If You had been there, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
I don’t think those are necessarily questions of unbelief.
Sometimes they’re the questions of people who know God is good, know He is able, and cannot understand why He didn’t do what they know He could have done.
I think that’s what makes grief so difficult for people of faith.
We aren’t just wrestling with what happened.
We’re wrestling with what happened in a world where God is present, loving, and powerful.
And sometimes those truths feel terribly difficult to hold together.
This is not how it should be
Years ago, Steven Curtis Chapman lost his young daughter in a tragic accident.
He later made an album called Beauty Will Rise, born out of that grief.
I’ve been thinking about the tension in those songs.
The ache of saying, “Lord, this isn’t how it was supposed to be.”
And yet somehow, still turning toward Him.
I think there’s a kind of faith that can only exist in that tension.
Not the faith that says everything worked out.
Not the faith that has found an explanation that makes the pain acceptable.
But the faith that says:
This is not what I wanted.
This is not what I would have chosen.
If I were God, I would have chosen something different.
Yet here we are.
And I still trust You.
I still love You.
I still believe You are good.
I’m not sure I can explain that kind of faith. And I certainly don’t want to make it sound easier than it is.
Especially not to a family that is waking up each morning to a world without someone they love.
But I keep coming back to something in the story of Lazarus.
Jesus wept
Jesus knew what He was going to do.
He knew Lazarus would rise.
And yet, when He came to the tomb and saw Mary weeping, and the people around her weeping, He was deeply moved.
And then we get those two remarkable words.
Jesus wept.
He didn’t stand outside the tomb and tell everyone to cheer up because everything was going to be fine.
He didn’t explain the larger purposes of God.
He wept.
The One who knew resurrection was coming still entered into the grief of the people He loved.
I find that incredibly comforting.
Because sometimes I think we imagine faith means getting to a place where the pain doesn’t hurt so much. Where we can explain what God is doing. Where we can confidently tell people that everything happens for a reason.
But Jesus didn’t seem interested in explaining away their tears.
He joined them.
And maybe that’s where we begin.
Not with answers.
But with the God who weeps with us.
Lord, help my unbelief
I’ve also been thinking about how easily I can turn God into a kind of superhero.
Someone who is supposed to swoop in whenever life becomes dangerous or painful and make everything right.
And He does rescue us. He does save. Again and again.
But He has never promised that loving Him means we will be spared every tragedy.
I know that in my head.
It’s much harder to know it in my heart when someone I know has died.
I believe there is so much more to God’s understanding, His purposes, and His perspective than I can begin to comprehend.
I believe one day we will see Him face to face.
But I don’t know why this happened.
I don’t know why Jolene was on that flight.
I don’t know why her family has to endure this.
And I don’t want to pretend I do.
I think of what Jesus said to Thomas:
“Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”
Maybe that’s where I find myself today.
Not seeing.
Not understanding.
But wanting to believe.
Believing that He is good, even when I cannot make sense of what has happened.
Believing that His love is not measured by whether He prevents every painful thing from touching my life.
Believing that nothing, not even death, can separate us from His love.
And when my belief feels small, I can borrow the prayer of another desperate father in the Gospels:
“I believe; help my unbelief!”
Thank You for Jolene
I’ve been thinking about those donuts again.
And the drama rehearsals.
And all the people Jolene helped over the years, many of whom we’ll probably never know.
The patients she cared for. The families she helped. The colleagues who saw something of her faith in the middle of difficult days.
What a beautiful thing to leave behind.
Not just memories of what you accomplished, but memories of how you loved people.
I am grateful that I got to know her, even in the small way I did.
And my heart breaks for her family.
Lord, thank You for Jolene.
Thank You for her life, her faith, her service, and the light she carried into places where hope must sometimes have been difficult to find.
Be near to her family in ways that words cannot accomplish.
And forgive us when we feel we must explain what we cannot understand.
Teach us to grieve with those who grieve.
To love while we have the opportunity.
To hold one another a little closer.
And to trust You, even here.
Especially here.
I don’t have an answer for why that plane went down.
I wish I did.
But I keep coming back to Jesus standing outside the tomb of someone He loved.
Knowing what was coming.
And weeping anyway.
Perhaps today, that’s enough for me to hold onto.
See you next Friday.