Eps. 143: October 2, 2023
God’s Faithfulness in the Midst of Daily Suffering
Summary: In this episode, Amy explores the complexities of faithfulness in the midst of suffering as a special needs parent. She shares her own experiences of feeling betrayed and angry at God as she faced challenging behaviors daily from several of her children. Amy discusses the disconnect between her expectations of what it means to be faithful and the reality of her lived experiences. Offering a shift in perspective, she reflects on a silent retreat and the importance of remembering ourselves as beloved by God, held in his hand. Amy encourages listeners to embrace the messiness and doubts of faithfulness and find solace in being God's beloved.
Key Moments:
[1:02] Is it possible to just trust and obey God? It’s not that simple
[3:17] Feeling mad, betrayed, low—God can handle it
[9:10] Deep life security and not task management
[11:09] Not servants but beloved family
Resources:
What it feels like to be the Nurturing Enemy
The Unhiding of Elijah Campbell: Kelly Flanagan
Mission Shaped Spirituality: Susan Hope
If you enjoyed the show:
Eps. 143: October 2, 2023
God’s Faithfulness in the Midst of Daily Suffering
Summary: In this episode, Amy explores the complexities of faithfulness in the midst of suffering as a special needs parent. She shares her own experiences of feeling betrayed and angry at God as she faced challenging behaviors daily from several of her children. Amy discusses the disconnect between her expectations of what it means to be faithful and the reality of her lived experiences. Offering a shift in perspective, she reflects on a silent retreat and the importance of remembering ourselves as beloved by God, held in his hand. Amy encourages listeners to embrace the messiness and doubts of faithfulness and find solace in being God's beloved.
Key Moments:
[1:02] Is it possible to just trust and obey God? It’s not that simple
[3:17] Feeling mad, betrayed, low—God can handle it
[9:10] Deep life security and not task management
[11:09] Not servants but beloved family
Resources:
What it feels like to be the Nurturing Enemy
The Unhiding of Elijah Campbell: Kelly Flanagan
Mission Shaped Spirituality: Susan Hope
If you enjoyed the show:
Welcome to Take Heart, a podcast about creating space for connection, hope, and joy as a mom to a child with disabilities or special needs. We want you to feel connected and encouraged as you navigate the messy, emotional, and joy-filled life together. Hi, I'm Amy J. Brown, and you're listening to episode 143.
This month on the podcast, we're talking about faithfulness and suffering. We all have ideas of what it means to be faithful. When I was a little girl, I used to sit next to my grandma in the pew and sing the hymn Trust and Obey. You may or may not be familiar with this hymn, but the chorus says, trust and obey, for there's no other way to be happy in Jesus but to trust and obey—those words fit rather naively into my black-and-white childlike mind. I'm a girl who likes to know the rules upfront. So if I trust God and obey God, I will be happy, right? That was my definition of faithfulness for a really long time. The life isn't always that black and white. We can do all that we think God has asked of us and still have our hearts broken.
I have a Post-It note in my office. It's been there for about four years and it says this.
How do you live in a space of deep disappointment and disillusionment? Knowing what the Bible says about who God is and his promises, especially when those promises do not happen? This question was asked to me by a young mom who was going through a difficult season. She said them in a whisper with tears in her eyes. I did not have an answer for her, but her pain and the guilt over her doubt have stuck with me.
This question of how do I be faithful in the midst of this hard life? Faithfulness, what does it really mean? Her question came at a low point for me. As you know, I have three biological kids and three adoptive kids. My two oldest adoptive children have reactive attachment disorder and other issues. But for years, my youngest seemed to be okay. Now, looking back, I realized she was flying under the radar. The other two children's behaviors were so severe that she seemed okay.
But then puberty hit, and I started to see some unsettling behaviors. I always thought she was going to be the one without issues. After ten years of challenging parenting, I thought, okay, this one, the last one, will be okay.
I remember sitting in church after her first hospital admission for a mental health crisis. I was not sweetly singing trust and obey. I was so mad at God that I said, do you hate me? Why? Why all three of them? I followed you. I obeyed you. I adopted. And this is how you treat me? This was not a very happy Jesus moment. I was not the picture of faithfulness. I was mad and felt betrayed by the God I was taught to trust.
I was also hurting for our family as we navigated yet another challenging season. That was a low moment for me. And it was not the only one on this journey. Have you ever felt this way? So, if you have, listen to me. It's okay to feel mad and betrayed by God. He can handle whatever you are feeling. But what do we do with suffering when it seems that God is not who we think he should be?
When we have doubts and life doesn't look like it should? What do we do with all the promises we have clung to, leaving us with empty hands?
We all have had scripture memorized that we've clung to or scripture said over us. And then that scripture doesn't end up true in our lives. Maybe you raised a child and trained him up in the way of God, and he walked away from his faith. Or read that children were a blessing, but you struggled with infertility. How about this? He will heal all your diseases, but you face the dailiness of a child struggling with the disease.
My God provides all I need, but you can't pay the mortgage. I'm not here to address theological reasons for suffering. I have no pat answers. The reality is life is hard. I want to explore our ideas about faithfulness and how that shapes us. What does it mean to be faithful in the challenging moments and daily grind? How do you live in a space of deep disappointment and disillusionment, knowing what the Bible says about God and His promises, especially when those promises don't seem to come true?
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I used to think that faithfulness meant trying harder, never doubting, being perfect, progress, and efficiency. But that is not what faithfulness means to me anymore. But what does it mean?
Well, let me tell you a story. A few months ago, I attended a seven-day silent retreat. Yes, you heard me: seven days of silence. I'm an introvert, and I loved every minute of it. Now, for extroverts out there, I just want to assure you I talked one hour daily to a spiritual director.
I have been so looking forward to this retreat. I was exhausted after grad school, parenting, writing, and launching a book. It took a bit to get used to it, but I enjoyed my time. I read, I prayed, and I slept a lot. Every evening, I would walk in the cemetery. I find cemeteries peaceful. I was fascinated by the graves. Graves can tell you a lot about a person. You can learn who was a NASCAR fan, who loves the Cleveland Browns, or the Chicago Cubs. I saw a few Disney fans.
I passed the resting place of police officers and men who'd served in wars. I checked the dates of deaths and marriages to figure out how long a spouse had to live without their loved one. I stopped at the graves of children. I saw a family with young children jump out of a van and bring birthday balloons to the grave of a beloved grandfather who'd been gone for five years. The cemetery is a place of remembrance.
One word I saw most on the gravestone was beloved—beloved wife, daughter, husband, friend. Now, we don't know what kind of lives these people had, what heartaches and joys, but in the end, beloved was how they were remembered.
I think this is what it means to be faithful in suffering, to remember we are God's beloved. We are the beloved. He is faithful. The word beloved is a hard word for a mom of kids with reactive attachment disorder. RAD kids come with trauma, and they cannot attach to a nurturing caregiver due to the trauma. Most often, that caregiver is the mom. Here is a description from RAD Advocates.
I will link this in the show notes. And the term they use in right advocates is nurturing enemy. I use a nurturing caregiver, but the kid sees, the most nurturing person in their life as an enemy. So this is what they say. The term nurturing enemy refers to the nurturing enemy as the primary caregiver of the child with complex developmental trauma, otherwise known as reactive attachment disorder. These children experience trauma.During their early critical development stages and struggle with the impact left on the brain.
A child with reactive attachment disorder has an intense fear of abandonment and a negative projection of hostility, anger, and rejection onto their nurturing enemy, their mom. Rad behaviors, sheer volume, and intensity often lead to the primary caregiver's post-traumatic stress disorder. This dynamic sets the stage for a roller-coaster relationship in which both the child and the primary caregiver gradually become confused, exhausted, angrynand unwilling to trust each other.
Now, I'm not beloved by my kids with attachment issues, through no fault of their own. So, rejection has been a big part of my mothering journey. And that pain goes deep. They do not show me love because of their trauma and attachment issues. So, for the last 19 years, I've lived with kids who could not love me. So the word beloved; it makes me tear up just saying the word. And I'm not the only one. I know other moms, who feel the same way.
Their rejection and pain caused them to wonder if they had heard God wrong about adoption. I asked, how can they trust in a God that lets this happen? These moms asked me, how do I keep going? How do I keep my faith intact? How do I remain faithful?
In the book The Unhiding of Elijah Campbell by Kelly Flanagan, it is a great novel, I recommend it, a pastor says to the main character who's going through a really hard time, asking where is God? He says this quote: “faithfulness is remembering God always holds us in his cupped ever-present hands, waiting for us to notice we are held by love in every moment. Faithfulness is remembering you are the beloved.”
What would it be like if we went through life, securing the fact that we are loved by God? Is it hard for you to think of yourself as beloved? Yes, we all have been taught that God is love. And we know what it means to be a faithful, loving parent. We keep up with medical supplies and prep for an IEP meeting unless you're naive like me and assume they would help. But I digress. I learned that lesson, and I haven't ever done it again. We keep up with behavior charts, insurance forms, and medical appointments.
As special needs parents, we need to be taskmasters at times to get it all done. We need to be Martha, not Mary because we all know no one eats dinner without Martha. We are so efficient and faithful in this life of caregivers, but in doing all this, we can become taskmasters of our own souls. We assume we must do better, pray more, and be more. The list goes on. That is not faithfulness. It is a form of commitment but not the kind of faithfulness our soul needs.
Your soul doesn't need one more thing on the to-do list. You need to remember you're God's beloved, and how does that even fit in this life? I received a master's degree in Spiritual Formation at Friends University. It was a two-year program, and each semester, we traveled to Wichita, Kansas, for a week of residency. It was held at a spiritual retreat center.
When the students arrive,the first thing that would greet you at the entrance was a life-size bronze sculpture depicting the wedding in Cana, Jesus' first miracle. At our first residency, we were asked to walk around the sculptures and identify what character in the story we relate to. It will not come as a surprise to you that I relate to the servants. I'm a girl who can get things done and a faithful little pack mule who can carry a load. I would be the first to fill the water jugs. Now, this is Jesus' first miracle,but another miracle that needs to be done is in me and you. We are to learn that we are the guest. We get to show up and be served the best wine because we are loved by God.
Does this resonate with you, or are you thinking, Amy, I hear you, but I don't have time to walk through cemeteries and ponder the meaning of life? I have stuff to do. What does this mean practically? I get it. I want a 10-step process on how to do something, but friend, this is different. Remembering you're the beloved is a lifelong process.
It is a relationship. Will it heal the marriage ,stop the trips to the ER, or cause the IEP meeting to give you all you want and get dinner made? Probably not. We will still have to walk through these lives, but it may cause you to walk feeling held by God amid the struggle. The definition of being faithful is steadfast and loyal. Let's be faithful, steadfast, and loyal to the truth that we are loved.
In the book Mission Shapes Spirituality, Susan Hope reflects on the baptism of Jesus and God's declaration of love for Him. Remember, Jesus is baptized, and a voice comes from heaven saying, this is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. Susan writes” that this is the start of the public ministry, the kickstart to all that follows. And it started with a word, not a word about mission, but about being a son and being greatly loved.
And not only greatly beloved but greatly delighted in. God says, with you, I am well pleased. Carrying not so much the meaning, I am pleased with you not because you've done a good job, obeyed me, and met my demands. But you delight me, I enjoy you, I like what I see. This is at the beginning of Jesus' ministry before he'd done any miracles. And God says, I love you; I delight in you.” I love that picture, and I love those words.
We are the beloved, and God is the faithful one. I hope these words resonate with you and and make you feel less burdened and more like a guest than a servant. To be honest, these words are for me. I'm an awkward guest, always waiting, wanting to jump up and prove my worth. I do not do this well at all.
Because we are His beloved, we can tell Him our frustrations and fears. We can stand in church and wonder why we feel far away or doubt His presence, but His faithfulness doesn't change. Let me say this one more time. You are God's beloved. You are the invited guest, and the best wine is for you. I'd like to end with a reading from Ephesians 3, 14-19, and this is rewritten in the Amy J. Brown version. And here we go.
May He grant you His glorious riches, strengthening you by His Spirit. May Christ make His home in you. May His love root down into the depths of you, giving you a solid ground to stand on so that you can know the deepest truth of His love, the highest heights of His favor, and the longest and widest that His arms reach for you, His beloved. Yes, this love is incomprehensible, but it is real and true and will fill you to overflow it.