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When Healing Doesn't Happen

Loving God when life doesn’t make sense
By Lynn Heatley, R.N.

I am close to 50 and have experienced a lot of life that doesn’t make much sense, especially when it comes to the area of suffering. Suffering rarely is something we choose, rather it seems to choose us. And usually when we least expect it.

I became a nurse when I was in my early twenties. I began my journey early of seeing individuals and families having to walk through very difficult, if not tragic, circumstances. Although my training as a nurse included aspects of showing compassion, it took a personal crisis to bring the point home.

Newly married, at the age of twenty-two, suffering visited me as cancer struck my mother in the form of a brain tumor. Six months into this horrible disease, I took time off from my job to assist her in the aspect of caregiving. Three months later, she was dead and I was thrust into the realm of suffering through great loss of a mother I dearly loved. A new awareness and compassion developed through this experience of loss. Although I had prayed desperately for God to heal my mother, the answer of healing was not what I was hoping for and God’s choice was to take her home. READ MORE