My apologies for taking a two-week disappearance, but it has been really rough lately. Life gets tricky sometimes. The past few days has been nothing less than trying. The complexity of summer, social aspects of covid-19, recovery from the head injury, stress, and a few family gatherings have kept us busy. It has been quite a mixture. I’m sure many others can relate.
This week I unexpectedly was faced with an old question. It’s a question cloaked as a foe, one that I’ve gone many rounds with. It is one that I’ve battled against for the last fifteen years of my life. It is a simple question yet one without any simple answer. The same question plagues countless others around the world. It is a question we expect to get a quick answer to, but looking further into it, we see that the shallow pool of water we think is only inches deep turns out to be bottomless. The question of “why” is one that has puzzled people for ages. I am no different than the countless others who have asked it.
Why?
Monday came around just like any other day, yet in the back of my mind I knew what date it was. I didn’t think about it much during the morning, but later on it tried to prick me in the back. July twentieth was the day my first wife passed away. Each year it comes and goes in a different way. Sometimes there are good memories. Sometimes there is sorrow that can’t be explained. Sometimes, even though I am now happily remarried, there is still a remembrance of the pain involved with it all. This year was quite different.
Without going into too much detail, our son text me Monday. Most of the time seventeen-year-old sons get right to the point, but in a way that doesn’t quite show exactly what they are feeling. This was no exception.
I couldn’t believe what he sent me. One of his racing buddies, who he goes practice riding with on occasion, lost his mother to a gunshot wound. Sounds unheard of, I know. I quickly tried to find out what was going on, though again, seventeen-year-olds like to send texts and then not talk about it anymore.
A million thoughts raced through my mind.
The biggest one?
Why?
It was no different than the exact same way I have asked it countless times myself. Finding out more details only made the inquisition worse. Why did an innocent person’s life end in such a tragic way? Why did it have to happen to such a nice kid? Why did someone who had nothing to do with the evil in this world pay for the stupidity of a shooter who didn’t even know where he really was? The wrong house? Seriously? Why now, on the twentieth of July of all days?
I turned to my wife and told her what happened. I was saddened for a hundred reasons. Sad for the family. Sad for the friend. Sad for my son who now has something so unfortunate to tie him and this racing buddy together with. To both have mothers pass away on the same day is beyond bizarre.
My wife broke into tears. Faerie couldn’t hold or process the information either.
I have been working hard on my memoir, All That the Locusts Have Eaten: God’s Redemption Through Loss and Heartache. I am doing my best to keep it on schedule, and have it debut in late August. A thousand things seem to be fighting against it, as it’s pretty clear that the enemy doesn’t want this book coming out. If you could, I'd appreciate prayer for this. Still, I’m doing my best to press on. I’m working with a fabulous editor who is doing the best she can to help a man with a brain injury polish up a book that addresses this exact question. Why do bad things happen to good people? Doesn’t God care? Why did he/she/they have to leave? Why am I going through such heartache? As best as I can, I’m trying to get this memoir out to those who desperately need to read what God has taught me on these subjects- the subject of why.
Why?
To be honest, today’s post might be more of a reflection for me than help for readers of Life Compass Ministries. Maybe I’m the one who needs to look inward today and look into this question deeper. So many of us take things for granted- myself included.
Life. It is precious. It can be over in a blink of an eye. What is really important? Are the things we chase worthy of our time and energy? Are the struggles we entangle ourselves with really worthy of the time we give to them? Why did such a young mother have to say goodbye to a family? At the hand of a drug abuser? Really?
Maybe today’s post is more of a moment to pause and reflect. What is here today can be gone tomorrow. Brad’s friend knows that for sure. So, do many of us. And then we ask ourselves, why?
Today instead of a verse, I want to send out a prayer.
Dear Lord, in these days of struggle, we ask that your love would envelop us so deeply, so genuinely, and so profoundly, that we simply cannot feel anything but awestricken by the level of relentless affection you shower us with each moment. Hold us in these trying times. When we are weak, carry us. When we don’t have the faith or strength anymore, hold us tightly. I lift up those who have lost loved ones this year. Hold their hearts. Send your Comforter, the Holy Spirit to help. After all, you are the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort.
And that is what your people need.
Amen.
By Chuck Carr