Our deepest held beliefs are severely challenged when we face suffering and grief.

Situations like Nancy's stir the most profound questions of belief.

"There is a significant birthday coming up at my house, and I'm finding myself thinking about it quite often. When I do I feel a lump forming in my throat, and tears begin to burn behind my eyes.

Soon the day is coming when our daughter, Hope, would be ten... Our daughter's life was marked by days rather than years; she lived 199 days. In other words, there were not nearly enough of them, in my accounting. And as I'm anticipating what would have been her tenth birthday, I'm also anticipating the day that comes 199 days later--the day that will mark a decade since I have held her and known her. It feels like an ever-widening chasm as the years take me further away from her, even as they bring me closer to her.

Honestly I had not know much sorrow in my life before Hope introduced me to it. And one might think that in loving and losing her, I along with my husband, David, and my son Matt, had received our full share. But only two and a half years later we buried her brother Gabriel, who was born with the same fatal metabolic disorder as his sister had and lived a mere 183 days.

I don't remember all the specifics of what our pastor said the two times we stood at the grave where Hope and Gabe are buried together, but I do remember that what he said really mattered. At Hope's graveside service, he said something like, "This is the place where we ask, 'Is the gospel really true?'"  There was a deep yes inside me as he spoke, and I had been thinking about that question a lot in the months that led up to that difficult day" (Hearing Jesus Speak into Your Sorrow, Nancy Guthrie, pp xiii, xiv).

My theology was incomplete.

Situations like Nancy's, thankfully, were absent from most of my life and ministry. It caused me to make the common mistake of an incomplete theology. While I studied about God and sought to have a meaningful relationship with the Divine, it was not very well connected to the reality of suffering and grief. Consequently my theology sought to produce a perpetual good mood filled with excitement while in pursuit of world changing results for the transcendent God but with minimal experience of the present God in my losses and dark emotions.

"Ignoring our emotions is turning our back on reality; listening to our emotions ushers us into reality, and reality is where we meet God... Emotions are the language of the soul. They are the cry that gives the heart a voice... However, we often turn a deaf ear--through emotional denial, distortion, or disengagement. We strain out anything disturbing in order to gain tenuous control of our inner world. We are frightened and ashamed of what leaks into our consciousness. In neglecting our intense emotions, we are false to ourselves and lose a wonderful opportunity to know God." (The Cry of the Soul, Dan Allender and Tremper Longman in The Emotionally Healthy Church by Peter Scazzero, p. 55). 

Thrust into the world of hospice, my shallow theology was exposed. 

My opportunities to care for others increased, my perspective changed and my caring skills improved.  The personal benefit of discovering my own need for care grew also.

As this was happening I was discovering the difficult Scriptures and example of Jesus that should have been obvious. But, I missed the lament of many Psalms and the weeping of Jesus at Lazarus' tomb. Oh, I saw them, but in my pursuit of the positive, the attractive and exciting, I missed the essence of those events and the common need of every person for God to meet them in the dark places of their life.

Then my theology expanded, with a fuller knowledge of who God is, his character, purpose and plan.  God pays attention to every individual with their tears, growns and deaths. Spending even a little time considering that truth, can change our understanding of who God is, what He does and what it means to be loved by him.  There we can experience His care and find the meaning and importance of care.

Care is more than kindness toward those who suffer. Care is the expression of our experience and belief in God.

I hope this brief post leads you closer to the God of love and care. Also, I am glad to introduce you to a couple of great resources in the books by Nancy Guthrie and Peter Scazzero while reinforcing the belief that the foundation of care ministry is the theology of the God who cares.