My husband and I were on the way to the hospital for the birth of our second child. Our daughter Larissa was born in the early hours of the morning. Grandparents brought our two-year-old daughter, Amber, over to see her baby sister, and she chattered away, so excited. It all felt exactly as we had imagined it. Until it didn’t.
Life Takes a Turn
One week later, I was at the pediatrician’s office because Larissa seemed “off.” Our doctor excused himself from the room, and a terrible dread filled my heart as I overheard several doctors conferring outside the room. They sent Larissa in an ambulance to the hospital for testing. A few hours later a specialist came into the room and said the words no parent ever wants to hear: “Mr. and Mrs. VanOsdol, I’m sorry to tell you your daughter has a congenital heart defect.” Just four days later, Larissa died in our arms, and we were left to pick up the shattered pieces of our lives.
What Happens When God Doesn’t Answer Our Prayers?
Thirty-five years later, as I think about that year of our lives, I picture it as a timeline with the years of 1990-1991 smothered by a black cloud. It’s hard to sum up everything we went through in this blog, but I grappled for years with the big question of WHY DIDN’T GOD ANSWER THE MANY PRAYERS TO HEAL LARISSA?, which led to many other questions:
- Is God really a good God?
- Is God trustworthy?
- Did I somehow cause Larissa’s heart defect?
- Why does God allow His children to experience pain?
God Met Us Where We Were
As we walked through that time, I journaled the sadness, depression, hopelessness, anger, and despair I was feeling. Healing came in layers as I hashed out my questions with God. Hebrews 4:15-16 tells us to “come boldly to His throne to find mercy and grace in our time of need,” and day by day, I was doing that. Life continued as did my questions. For example, 21 months after Larissa died, our son Jesse was born. If you read last week’s blog, you’re familiar with our son and some of his crazy life events. One I did not mention last week is that when he was 6 weeks old, Amber, Jesse, and I were t-boned in a car wreck that totaled our car. Unbeknownst to me, my mother-in-law had dreamed about this accident a few weeks before it happened. She and my father-in-law had been praying ever since for our safety. I am certain God used their prayers to save Jesse, because the reality of what happened during the accident was the exact opposite of the tragedy of her dream, down to each precise detail. Amber and I were bruised, but Jesse had not a scratch. Years later, Amber was very ill in the hospital with asthma. It took a year of outpatient treatment to heal her. A few years after that, when Jesse was 18, he was badly burned in a fire. But He healed far faster than expected and with far less medical intervention than the doctors said he would need. One doctor even called it miraculous. In the midst of my thanks and praises to God for His protection and healing, I couldn’t help but think of Larissa and why those prayers were not answered.
Why, God, Why?
For years the big question hovered just below the surface of my mind. And then one day as I was again bringing it to God, the Spirit spoke to my spirit: “‘No’ is an answer. It’s just not the one you wanted.” That rocked me. I saw similarities to the times I had said no to my own children’s requests. It wasn’t that I hadn’t heard my kids’ pleas or had ignored them, I had said “no” because in my adult wisdom, I knew it wasn’t the right thing for them. This is true in the Bible too. In 2 Corinthians 12:7-9 Paul tells us that three times he asked God to remove his thorn in the flesh, but God did not. But the biggest “no” in the Bible was to a prayer Jesus prayed in Gethsemane. “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; yet not as I will, but as You will.” God taught me that “yes,” “no,” and “wait” are all answers. And they all require trusting my life and the lives of those I love to God’s plans, even when it hurts.
Living Without Understanding
While God has answered many of my questions, I have come to terms with the fact that this side of heaven, I won’t have answers to every question. We live in a fallen world. And God is infinitely wiser than I am. Even though I don’t have all the answers, I have something much more valuable: God’s presence and peace. In those years of grieving and searching and asking, God was closer to me than I have ever felt Him in my life. He always gave me the strength for each difficulty I faced. After the first anniversary of Larissa’s death had passed, and I had faced every “first” that comes up in a year of grieving, I remember thinking, “I hope I never have to go through this again, but God, I don’t want to lose this utter dependence I have on You for each day.” Because of His presence, God gives us the strength to say in the face of our big questions as Jesus did, “Not my will but yours will be done.”