Behind the Scenes

The last week I have done a lot of reflecting on Easter and grief.  Easter should be a time of rejoicing!  Our Savior has risen!  He has saved us!  While that is the best news of all, before you can talk about the prize of eternity with Him in heaven you have to confront His death.  It was an ugly, painful and cruel death that God could have stopped at any moment.  But He didn’t stop it.

I had a very emotional Easter this year.  I just missed my brother so incredibly much.  Leading up to the week before Easter I was also confronted with the pain and grief so many of my friends are experiencing on so many different levels.  News of another death by suicide, a miscarriage, a failed test that a dear friend was hoping to finally pass, and the death of an adopted baby’s birth mother send my mind into overdrive.  It’s so easy in those big moments of grief to cry out to God, “Where were you?  Why didn’t you stop this?  Why do you allow so much pain in this world?”  And then I remembered that God also allowed his own son to be crucified.  For me.  For you.  For all of us.  Wow.  If that isn’t life shattering then I don’t know what is.  This sent me reeling!  God allowed the worst thing to happen to him – the death of his child.  He knows our pain.  He knows our suffering.  He understands when we are in a heap on the floor crying out to Him, “Why?”  We will never know the reasons we have been allowed to suffer such unfathomable grief in this world until we see Jesus face to face, but I do find a bit of comfort in my loss when I stop and remember that God gets it.

The same morning I was wallowing in my self pity I was struck by another thought.  God may have allowed me to suffer greatly in this world, but what acts has he protected me from that I am completely unaware?  God has already won the great battle for us, but I truly believe that there are angels fighting evil for us every second of every day.  I am hurting, but just thinking that I am being protected from so much more sends shivers down my spine.  If we could only get a small glimpse of what goes on behind the scenes, so to speak, we may see the world in a much different light.  How many angels are sitting around me and my family this very moment shielding us from the evil of demons working for the devil?  How many angels are guarding me on my drives each day, during our sleep at night and how many are covering my children throughout the day?  Training my thoughts to focus on these things instead of choosing to wallow in my grief helps me to calm down, take a deep breath and spend time being thankful for His protection from the things I can not see.

I am still in awe that God brought this revelation to me, and I’m floored that it took me this long to “get it”.  Of course I will always have hard days, and any second of any day tragedy could strike again, but in the mean time I will be thankful for the angels that are fighting a deeper battle that I have every imagined.