Lots of things happen and we try to understand. Some situations are predictable and therefore easy to understand. Others we can make sense of even if it is not the outcome we would normally expect. Then there are the situations far beyond what we would expect. I can, with some degree of accuracy, predict that a child with an upbringing that encourages questioning for the purpose of understanding and involves laughing together but never laughing at the child when the answer is obvious, will do well. Power dynamics in which the person perceived to have the power explains what is not understood in terms suited to the other person’s intellectual limitations and mental capacity will lead to a well-developed adult. If this continues through the teenage years, there is a higher degree of success for the maturing individual and a stronger relationship with all who pour into their lives but…

Life happens and some of it differs from our understanding.

As much as we think we have everyday life things figured out, something will happen that defies our way of thinking. Anyone who ever dreamed in their younger years of what it would be like to get married and have a family, knows within the first year of marriage that the dream spouse doesn’t line up with your dreams.

Later you and your dream spouse, the one you have learned to accept will never be as good as you once imagined, decide to have children. Yes, your marriage wasn’t the fairytale you had hoped for, but you will be the best parents ever, you have to be, because your dreams always suggested that you will be the perfect caretakers of the little bundles of joy. No one told you that the perfect parent can only exist if the perfect child is born into your family. Once you start cleaning up the toxic waste container called a diaper full of the food that didn’t get spit up on your favorite clothes, you wonder why you bothered waking up all night long to put in something that was just going to come back out.

Yes, this isn’t your dream life with your dream spouse and your dream kids, but what you once understood as the way things should be, you now understand is impractical, but with a little work you can build a new dream that better fits reality.

Life happens and some of it we can’t understand.

As hard as we try to explain things, whether to ourselves or to another person, understanding is not always possible, at least not fully. We have changed our expectations from our childhood, and let’s be honest, our childish dreams, to better fit the imperfection that is life. As a matter of fact, imperfect becomes perfect because it is us, it is our family, it is our marriage, it is life. Over time we have weathered many storms, some of our own doing, these we understand, some we were in the wrong place at the wrong time, not our doing, but we understand why things happened, but the hardest are the things we can’t understand.

Healthy people get sick, young people die. Car accidents leave friends or family with unimaginable injuries. People are scammed out of their life savings or lose their job followed by their home. Kids raised in a loving home with good morals, stray. Marriages grow cold, spouses shut each other out, partners stray and even leave. Life happens and we can’t understand. We had dreams and none of this was part of them. We know that the unexpected can happen. We know that no matter how careful we are we cannot control everything. We know no matter how good a spouse we have been, this person would never stay with one person. We know even great parents can’t count on all of their kids turning out the way they thought they would.

Life happens, some of it we understand, some of it we will learn to understand and some of it we will never understand this side of heaven.

I want to say God is in control. I want to say God has a plan. I want to say God is working all things together for the good of those who love Him, it’s all biblical, but it isn’t always helpful when we cannot understand why life happens the way it does and why it is happening to me/us.

I think the best thing I can say to myself is, “it’s okay to want to understand but it is also okay not to understand.” Life happens and sometimes it appears God steps in and sometimes it appears He doesn’t. Why? I don’t understand. Maybe faith is more about understanding who God is rather than why things happen. Maybe we should consider it a blessing when we do understand or come to understand. Maybe we should consider it an even bigger blessing when we don’t understand but we trust in the One who does.

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight. Proverbs 3:5-6 (NIV)