Roads Marked With Suffering

...We accept the good that God gives us. Shouldn't we also accept the bad?"...
Job 2:10

Blessed be Your Name
When the sun's shining down on me
When the world's all as it should be
Blessed be Your Name

Blessed be Your Name
On the road marked with suffering
Though there's pain in the offering
Blessed be Your Name
~Matt Redman, "Blessed Be Your Name"

As I drove to the hospital on the evening of May 21st, K-Love was playing one of my favorite songs, "Blessed Be Your Name". My history with this song has always been painful (yet I still love it, isn't that odd?). It's one that comes up frequently during our church's worship service. And that line about suffering has always made me sniffle. Before. When I thought we were in the most terrible place - dealing with debt, financial issues, business issues. I had no inkling what was to come.

So, hearing that song on the way to the hospital left me with a sense of foreboding. Like God was trying to prep me. I remember feeling uneasy about it playing, yet I was still belting it out with all my might, right through my contractions. And I remember praying in the car, giving up whatever control I foolishly thought I had, handing it all over to God. But at the same time, praying for a positive outcome.

And we all know how that went.

But yet, after all this, I feel so much closer to God.

I am a person easily embarrassed by attention. But when Pastor Shawn called for those needing prayer to come to the front this past Sunday, it was as if I'd relinquished muscle control - God was literally yanking me to the front. And I knelt there, completely overcome. Not by my suffering, but in thankfulness to God. Which brings me to the book of Job. In Chapter 1, verse 20, Job had been notified that he'd lost all his earthly possessions, and his ten children had perished. And his response? "I was born naked, and I'll die naked. You give, and You take away. May Your Name be praised."

I relate to that. I hope that God uses Leila's life. To help me help someone, or relate to them, or to offer compassion. To magnify Him. Through good times and bad, in feast and in famine. Because, ultimately, isn't that supposed to be our goal?