So much has happened in the last year, and I’m sure many of you could nod in enthusiastic agreement. I wanted to share some of my journey in this last year, and though I am no longer on the World Race, I felt it was fitting to share here as I reflect on the transition from being on the Race to being at home. So here goes!!
The change from one year to the next or one season to another can be jarring, and the change from 2019 to 2020 was exactly that for me. The majority of 2019 was spent on the World Race making new friends, traveling to new and exciting places, participating in amazing ministries, discovering my passions, and feeling so overwhelmed by the goodness of God and the blessings in my life. Yes, there were some hard moments and things to work through while I was on the Race (cue previous blogs), but I came home feeling so incredibly thankful for that time and so happy with life. Plus I had chosen to go on the World Race of my own volition, so any hardships I did face were sort of self-imposed!
Enter 2020. The beginning was filled with transition – starting my job at Eide Bailly again, visiting churches and sharing about my trip, moving to a new apartment, etc. The whole transition thing was taking longer than I’d hoped, and it wasn’t until March when I finally started feeling like things were getting back to normal. Just when normal arrived, we were required to work from home starting in the middle of March due to COVID. I wasn’t super happy with this at first, though I can now say I am quite thankful we were forced into it. It took time for me to get used to this new normal of not interacting much with coworkers, not going anywhere, and being in the same space all day. And it wasn’t until many months later that I realized I felt purposeless. Most of the things I had been super excited to dive into coming home from the Race were stripped away when COVID hit. It was no longer possible for me to pursue my passions in the way I had dreamed about and envisioned when I came home. And not only were the things I wanted to do outside of work no longer really an option, but I wasn’t even interacting with people at work. I sat at home all day doing taxes, and then sat at home some more after work with my roommate, and I just realized how purposeless that all made me feel. I was so sad that I had finally discovered some of my passions and knew where I wanted to use them, only to not be able to and have to try to think up something completely different.
Then enter July. Everything changed in July. My Dad went to the hospital, and it was discovered he had a brain bleed, cause unknown. I had no idea how much to worry about it because I don’t have any medical background or understanding of the seriousness of different conditions. He went home that week with a follow-up appointment in a month, but about a week later, he was back in the hospital, and this time, they thought it was a tumor. Again, how should I be feeling? Is that a death sentence or something that might not even be cancerous and will just require surgery to remove?
August was awful. All month, things continued to go downhill as the worst possible outcomes kept playing out. I prayed like crazy for my Dad’s healing because it was obvious things were getting worse very, very fast. We were searching desperately for answers, and we didn’t get a clear diagnosis that he had a very aggressive brain cancer until the last days of August, even though we had been in and out of hospitals for well over a month. (We didn’t get a final detailed diagnosis until the middle of October). The unknown of that entire time was agony. I was plagued by constant fears and thoughts of what could happen, and it was incredibly frustrating to feel like the doctors weren’t in any rush to do anything while we just watched my Dad get continually worse.
Less than a week after getting answers as to what we were dealing with and far sooner than we expected (the doctors had said 3-6 months, which was already bad enough), my Dad died. I was there that night, and it was the most excruciatingly awful night of my entire life. I begged and pleaded with God to save him. I begged other people to pray. I was so desperate that I could sometimes only say the name of Jesus and nothing else. And deep down, I thought he would be healed. And when he wasn’t, I was completely crushed. The moment he died, something shifted in me. I went from desperately weeping and feeling so many emotions to feeling one emotion: anger.
I was completely swallowed by anger. I did not want a single person to say a single word to me. I did not want a hug or to cry with someone or to talk at all. I felt overwhelmingly angry in a way I have never before felt. How could God possibly allow something so awful? What the brain tumor did to my Dad was the most cruel and senseless thing I have ever witnessed. There is no way I could possibly go into all the details of what I witnessed from July 20 to September 5, the night of my Dad’s death. All I can say is it was cruel, and I could not fathom how God could allow things to play out in the way they did. I felt completely abandoned by God. I felt like He did not care at all and that He had purposely turned his back on me the night I needed Him most, even though I had trusted Him and prayed constantly. I felt angry anytime someone would tell me some cliché thing about how my Dad was in heaven or how he wasn’t suffering anymore. Well, I am suffering, and I can’t even picture my Dad in heaven right now because I am overwhelmed and crushed by this weight of him being gone. I felt angry when people talked about God’s peace or presence because I had not experienced either of those things AT ALL since everything with my Dad started in July. And I never experienced God’s peace or presence for months after my Dad died. Neither did anyone in my family. In fact, even while my Dad was sick, my Mom got a bladder infection that went into her kidneys, and she was in physical pain for at least a week on top of trying to take care of my Dad. Lots of other little frustrating things happened, and I couldn’t help but wonder why God couldn’t cause some of those little things to just go away when we were already dealing with so much. I prayed for moments of peace, but it felt like there were none to be had by any of us.
In all honesty, after giving God a piece of my mind the night of my Dad’s death, I didn’t talk to Him at all for the next three weeks. This was partly because we were so busy, but partly because I had no energy to try to yell and scream at God the way I felt He deserved. Eventually, I knew I needed to start talking to Him again, even if it was me just being honest about my anger towards Him. So I did. But the very night I started talking to God again (I really shouldn’t say talking as it was truly only screaming), we got the news that my Grandpa had died from COVID. Now, to be fair, my Grandpa was 94 years old, had dementia, and had been in the nursing home for a few years. I loved him and will always be thankful he was my Grandpa, but he had forgotten who I was, and I had actually prayed before for God to just take him home. But NOW?!?!?! You had years before this and years after this to take him home, but you choose NOW?! The same MONTH my Dad died? That felt cruel. My poor Grandma not only lost her son whom she saw every day, but now she lost her husband also, and we all had another funeral to go to.
Also, as a result of my Dad dying, we were left with an overwhelming amount of work to do with the farm. We had a nonprofit lined up to help with harvest, but because he had died and wasn’t just sick, they could no longer help, which we found out a few days after the funeral. We were so overwhelmed trying to figure out how we could possibly get the harvest in, and my Mom and I were forced to learn as much as we could about the business. There was much to be done, and there still is, even now!
The same week my Grandpa died, my Mom, aunt and uncle, another uncle, and our family friends all got COVID. Besides my one uncle, they all really struggled through it for at least a solid two weeks. My aunt and uncle were hospitalized, and they also found a leak in my aunt’s heart unrelated to COVID. My Mom and our family friends went to the ER at different times during their sickness, and I was petrified and heartbroken the whole time they were sick. My Mom had to be alone for two weeks when she was so overwhelmed as it was, and I was absolutely terrified that she was alone. She had texted me that she almost fainted one day, and I was plagued by thoughts of her not being able to breathe and no one even knowing because my Dad was no longer there. I couldn’t lose my Mom too. It was too much for me to take in, and I was thrown back into the fear of the unknown and what ifs I had fought against while my Dad was sick.
We had to postpone my Grandpa’s funeral due to people getting COVID, and we finally had it the beginning of November. After that, it seemed things started to slow down. But I was left in a place of doubt and confusion about how to feel towards God. I knew all the truth. I did not need anyone to tell me that God works all things for our good or that He does care even when it doesn’t feel like it or that His ways and thoughts are higher than mine or that He has a plan or that my suffering will produce perseverance or that God is with me all the time or that my Dad is with Jesus or any number of other truths. And it made me kind of angry when other people tried to say those things to me. It felt like no one could possibly understand what I was going through because no one knew what I had seen and experienced. Even someone trying to relate their cancer story to my Dad’s seemed insensitive and made me bristle and throw up a wall because they couldn’t possibly understand what it was like to see my Dad the way he was. My mind knew the truth about God but go ahead and try to convince my heart those things are true when they feel like the most false statements in the world. My precious and amazing Dad was taken from me far too soon. I asked for healing in faith just like the Bible tells me to, and yet he was taken in such a cruel way despite my pleas. A friend of mine put it so well when she told me my mind knew the truth, but my heart hadn’t caught up yet.
So how do you move forward from that place? When you know that nothing will ever satisfy you besides relationship with God, but you feel beyond betrayed and unloved by Him? I felt stuck for quite a while. I was reading the Bible and being honest with God about my feelings, but I wasn’t sure how I would ever really move past it and be able to proclaim to others that He was good and that He loved me (or anyone). I had no conviction about God caring for me or any confidence that He heard my prayers at all. I felt like I was losing no matter what I prayed. If I asked God for something and He answered yes, I would end up being mad He answered that prayer but not the one that mattered the most to me: saving my Dad. But if He answered no to my prayer, I felt this deep bitterness that of course He wouldn’t answer because He sure didn’t answer my prayers about my Dad, so of course He doesn’t care or want to give me any good thing.
But I tried to force myself to keep reading the Bible and speak the truth my heart wasn’t believing. One of my biggest fears before anything with my Dad happened was that I would turn my back on God when hardships came. I prayed about it a lot, and when my Dad died, despite my anger, I knew I wouldn’t turn my back on God. I knew that to believe He didn’t care or wasn’t in control was a worse alternative, but I still felt stuck and unsure of how to move past my feelings. You can tell people all you want that feelings aren’t always truth, and I myself have always been a big believer in that, but when you’re right in the middle of those intense feelings, knowing that doesn’t necessarily do anything. I knew my feelings towards God probably weren’t reality, but I felt stubborn.
I don’t even know what shifted, but something did. At some point, my anger faded. I was still confused by so much (and still am), but I began to feel a desire to worship again. I started to become really thankful for Jesus coming and dying for me and being resurrected so that I could have an eternal hope beyond this life. This Christmas season began to mean so much more to me than it ever has. I don’t think I ever needed the hope of Jesus as much as I have this year, and I feel the awe and wonder of knowing I will see Jesus face to face someday. What an amazing hope in the midst of my sadness and confusion! I used to not get too excited about Christmas music or movies or get into the Christmas spirit much at all, but this year, I felt my heart soften and actually yearn for the season of Christmas and the hope it brings because I really needed it and still do every single day of the year.
As I sit here writing this, I’m sad. I’m disappointed. Nothing will take away the pain of losing my Dad or watching my family suffer as they have this past year. I feel like so many of the things I hoped for in 2020 after returning from the World Race were stripped from me and in ways that I still can’t make sense of. I’ve been able to look back on some of the things that occurred and see how they turned out for the better, but I definitely don’t have that hindsight for all of them. I still can’t make sense of why God did not reveal himself in any way to me in the hardest months of my life where I wanted a sense of His presence and peace the most. It may never make sense to me, but I also don’t want to sit in the ‘why’ forever. I don’t understand why some people feel God’s comfort and closeness in their darkest seasons and why others don’t. From my perspective, it feels so unfair, and it’s still hard for me to hear songs that talk about God being close in the darkest times or feeling God’s peace in suffering because that was not my experience. I don’t get it. But like I said, I don’t want to sit in it forever because I know my sight is limited compared to the God who sees and controls all, and the point of faith is trusting in what we don’t see.
“Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.” – Romans 8:24-25
I will hope for what I do not see. I will trust in a God who has been faithful my whole life and who has given me more blessings than I could ever possibly deserve, even when this last year has felt disappointing to say the least. 2019 was a year of joy and growth, and 2020 was a year of loss and disappointment, yet God remains constant even when my circumstances and feelings try to convince me He is not. I think of the song “It is Well with my Soul” and the line “Oh Lord, haste the day when my faith shall be sight.” In this life, God does not always reveal Himself in the way we think He should. It feels cruel sometimes, but I trust He is a good God with my absolute best interest in mind, and someday, I won’t need to have faith because Jesus will be right in front of me, His full glory on display. My heart cannot even fathom the joy I will feel to behold Him, to look upon Him, to be with Him at last, and I will press on in my faith in light of that hope, knowing someday my faith will be sight, and my vision will not be blurred by pain and suffering but will instead be renewed and whole and able to see the very God who created me, sent His own Son to die for me, loves me and always was, always is, and forever will be.
1 Peter 1:3-9 pretty much says it all: “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. In His great mercy, He has given us new birth into a living hope, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil, or fade, kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith – of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire – may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory, and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. Though you have not seen Him, you love Him, and even though you do not see Him now, you believe in Him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls!”
