Though You Slay Me

"I come, God, I come
Return to the Lord
The one who's broken
The one who's torn me apart
You strike down to bind me up
You say You do it all in love
That I might know You in Your suffering

Though You slay me
Yet I will praise You
Though You take from me
I will bless Your name
Though You ruin me
Still I will worship
Sing a song to the One who's all I need"

-Though You Slay Me
Shane and Shane



These words to a popular worship song have been playing repeat in my mind lately. They bring me back to moments in the past and even moments that creep into my inner self here and there still even after being incredibly blessed by my son through adoption. Moments of suffering with infertility. Moments where my faith struggles deeply. Moments where my head is desperately trying to wrap around the fact that I am chosen for this cross. I am chosen specifically in this moment in time to carry this. Me. The girl that struggles every day with self worth to begin with... is now carrying this. Why would my Father allow this? 

It's a question that plagues a lot of us. Why does he allow suffering? But I learn more and more each day that it is through suffering that we can truly and fully know Jesus. And He wants us completely and utterly to know Him. I believe mature faith is when we stop thinking of our Lord as an ATM. When we stop believing the lie that if He loves us, if He's truly there, He will show up...provide...give us what we think we need. Mature faith means we come to Him, we return to Him each day...wounded and bloody from our circumstances. When we still, through it all, feel an ounce of hope and joy even if only in a small inner corner of our deeper selves, that every tear is worth it. That we're growing closer to Jesus, sharing in His misery. That every second of it is totally, totally worth it. 

Blessed Mother Teresa went years, decades of feeling darkness and loneliness. Feeling like God wasn't there. She once wrote to her spiritual director, "For the first time in 11 years I have come to love the darkness. For I believe it is a part, a very small part of Jesus' darkness and pain on earth.  Today I felt deep joy that Jesus can't go anymore through agony but that He wants to go through it in me. More than ever I surrender myself to him. Yes more than ever I will be at His disposal." 

Theologian, John Piper once said in regards to such suffering, "Don't look to what is seen. Do not lose heart. Take these truths and day by day focus on them. Preach them to yourselves. Day by day get alone with God and preach His word into your mind until your hearts sings with confidence that you are new and cared for."

We all have our thing. Everyone has a battle they're fighting. I'm in no way alone in this. I used to cry for others that are going through really tough times and I still do don't get me wrong...but now my heart leaps a little because I know where there is suffering, they have the incredible opportunity to truly know God's son. That they can share in the pain of Jesus and know how deep His love is for us that He'd endure what He did while we rejected Him, while we spat on Him and killed Him. Jesus showed us that suffering is never meaningless.