Loss is tough. Grieve and Believe God has a plan

by Tiffany Smiley

Almost everyone can relate to one honest fact: We’ve all lost something.

Loss comes in many forms, and you don’t have to lose someone or something completely to experience it. God spared my husband’s life, but he lost his eyesight, and it has taken me many years to grieve that.

You may be wondering how my husband losing his eyesight is a loss for me. It’s crazy to think I would feel broken from my husband’s impairment, right? But the loss in this for me was the fact my husband would never look me in the eyes again and see me or his three children.

I have asked God for so long why he placed these evil acts in the lives of those I love most, and I have asked God how he could allow this to happen, especially to us, who have been faithful to him.

It was hard for me to accept that April 6, 2005, was the end of Scotty’s eyesight, and I kept asking God over and over again, just hoping that he would change what had occurred. But after years of being hurt, angry and confused, and after years of Scotty being blind without change in course, I realized that in God’s world, there are no mistakes.

In accepting the life that God gave me, and in embracing the change that had occurred in my life, I was given the strength to be a caretaker to my husband and to raise three resilient boys. I was given the strength to seek and find God’s will in every step of my life.

In my many years of grieving, I searched for understanding in the wrong places, and so often found myself trying to control in times of crisis. Seeking understanding in anything but God left me even more depressed, and more frustrated. I felt like I was losing purpose.

God found me at this point in my life, though, and he allowed me to heal. He gave me purpose in providing me with the wisdom to understand that nothing from God is meant to hurt us. I began to understand that God places people and circumstances in our lives so that we will surrender to his will.

God has the plan, the only plan, and when he throws adversities in our lives, he is asking us to adjust so that once we do, we will see all the beautiful plans he has made.

Living in God’s will, rather than my own, gave me not only the wisdom to understand God’s purpose, but also the courage to forgive God and forgive that man in the car who blinded my husband.

How could I do this? Because when I look around at my life, if I am truly living with the understanding of God’s will, I see all the amazing things that Scotty and I have been able to accomplish. I know that none of it would exist as it does if God had not allowed that man in the suicide car to cross paths with Scotty.

So loss. Loss is tough and it takes grieving to heal. But God does not have the purpose of hurting us with loss. His purpose is to redirect us. Try your best to remain in God and you will find that nothing occurs in his plan by mistake. He’s got this.

“Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me,” John 15:4 (NIV).