You know what my least favorite part of life is? That it’s completely out of my control. I do what I can to protect my kids, family members, friends, and pets, but sometimes it’s just not enough. I can’t be everywhere at the same time, and I can’t know everything. I am a limited human. I make mistakes. That’s why it’s crucial that I trust in God. What I’ve lived long enough to realize, though, is that I can trust God with all my heart, and bad things will still happen. Not can, will. In fact, I think that’s part of why it can be so hard for those of us who have experienced tragedy to hand over all control and anxiety to God. We wrongly conclude that God can’t be trusted with those closest to our hearts.

Something I realized recently is that even though I make mistakes with those I care about, sometimes even mistakes leading to dire consequences, God knew that it would happen. God knew about each of my mistakes before I was born, and He entrusted me with it anyway. He entrusted me with that child anyway. He entrusted me with that ministry anyway. He entrusted me with that friend anyway. He entrusted me with that pet anyway. God has a purpose and a plan for everything that He allows to happen in life, even when we don’t understand it. He is the God of redemption, and nothing is beyond His ability to redeem.

Proverbs 3:5-6 says, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.”

So, I trust God even when I don’t understand what He’s doing. I trust God even when I don’t understand why something had to happen. I acknowledge God in it all, even when the acknowledgment comes in the form of grief and lament. I cry out to God and ask Him why. I beg Him to fix it. I beg Him to take the pain away. These requests sometimes go unfulfilled. Then, ultimately, I turn my trust back over to Him in praise.

I do this with the big things in life. I do this with the little things in life. I do this everywhere in between. God cares about our pain, worries, and anxiety. If it means something to us, then it means something to Him too. That’s the love of a parent. When my littles have a worry, fear, or pain, my heart hurts for them, possibly more than if it was happening to me. Every parent I know has felt that same heartache of wanting to comfort their child and take away their pain but not being able to. In this world, there will be pain. Fortunately, we belong to a God who will take away all our pains one day. The knowledge of that day should be a comfort to us, a glimmer of hope in the darkness.

“He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” -Revelation 21:4

So, friend, I wish I could offer you a formula to make it all better. I wish I could tell you that if you put your complete trust in God, bad things wouldn’t happen anymore. Unfortunately, our world is broken, and this is where we have to be for now. The good news is that because of Jesus, we don’t have to live in brokenness forever. This world is the closest some of us ever get to hell and the closest others ever get to heaven. I can’t bear the thought of this world being as good as it gets, and that is my motivation for sticking it out here to share Jesus with everyone I can until God calls me home with Him.

This post was originally published on Nichole Suvar’s Intentional Life Blog.

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