Question Of Why Some Suffer

[ohsosad]

Why is it some of our loved ones had to endure terrible suffering? Why is the fate of some to suffer and others to be spared? I have been bringing this up with my pastor-counselor, and his take is not satisfactory to me. He says God created a perfect world and man has damaged it. There are poisons around us in the environment and in our food and our bodies are injured by this. That may be true, but the environment didn't give my husband diabetes which led to kidney disease which led to complications that killed him. He suffered terribly for many months. Why was he chosen to suffer, yet here I am healthy. Why am I so lucky? What about a young woman with children who dies of breast cancer? There are so many sad situations we hear about. Steve was such a kind, good man. Why did he have to suffer so much? My father was also a kind, good man. He laid down for a nap and had a heart attack and was gone in a minute - a wonderful death. Why did Steve not have that gift?

I know there are no answers. I just need a way to think about this that will help me. I agonize over Steve's suffering and it keeps coming back into my mind - seeing him in the hospital moaning and crying out for help. He didn't deserve the death he had.

Marty, I hope you have an article that touches on this.

Rita

[kayc]

Rita, I doubt if there are any answers that will satisfy you. I, too, believe that when man fell, things were set in motion that the earth was never the same again. Birth all the way through death is no longer perfect because the world is not perfect. Some believe in fate, as if everything that happens in life was willed by God...I do not believe that way. (What about rape? It happens all the time yet no way do I think God wills it! People attribute things to God that I think He has nothing to do with.) I think He's taken his hands off this world, so to speak, for a time, and someday things will be made right. I also believe that the place we go to after this is perfect. I know this is Christian teaching, and there are others here that believe differently, I'm not trying to sway anyone, just stating as I've been taught and what I've concluded along the way. My husband also had Diabetes, as do I now. I do believe that good sometimes comes from bad...not always, but sometimes, like the silver lining in the cloud. My grief journey has taught me that. In all I have been through and suffered through George's death and the aftermath that followed, I have learned so much, it has changed me. Of course I don't like the changes in my life without him, but the things I have learned, the personal growth...that has been a silver lining in the cloud. If we are open to it, if we want it, we can grow through the dark places. I don't know why God intervenes with some and doesn't seem to with others. It does seem unfair. I don't believe it's based on deservedness. I accept that He knows more about what He's doing than I do and there are things I cannot understand. We are finite creatures but we like to know all the answers...sometimes we don't get them. I do believe someday we'll know, but right now we are walking by faith, not sight. The Bible says now we see through a glass darkly, but then we shall see face to face...how true that is. I do know that for whatever suffering we have here, God is here to go through it with us, to hold our hand, so to speak, and He will help us through it. Perhaps it is then, when we turn to Him, that we are most blessed. I know it's almost impossible to see all this in early grief, at least it was for me. Everything within us resists their death, all that has happened, and that is natural, for they are our mates, joined to us in a miraculous way. I feel a connectedness with George even all these nine years later, that death could not separate. He was my true soul mate.

I am so sorry your husband suffered. I'm sure God too, cried at his suffering. There is a story in the Bible about a man that died...Jesus wept. He raised him from the dead. Oh that we had Him hanging around performing miracles when WE needed them! But the miracles at that time were probably done for another purpose. Who can know the mind of God! I don't worry any more about what I can't understand, it took me quite a while to reach that point...in the meantime, perhaps the first year, I had a hard time praying...and I had always been an avid pray-er. I knew God was there, I still believed in Him, but I felt like He was a million miles away. Eventually I realized He was there all the time, it was my mind or heart that had had a hard time...He never held that against me, He understood, He knew what I was going through, He was patient, He was big enough to take all my anger. It's okay to question, it's okay to feel angry, it is all part of the grief and very understandable.

[MartyT]

Rita, my dear, you might find this article to be of interest: Why? Why Me? Searching for Answers in Grief

Be sure to see the Related Articles listed at the base of the post, too. ♥

[kayc]

Excellent article, Marty, AND references! Why bad things happen to good people...thought provoking book.

[ohsosad]

Thank you, Marty. I've been busy reading those articles.

Rita

[enna]

I think it is in our nature to want an answer for "WHY" but as long as we live, I believe, we won't be given one. Anne