From “Telling Stories in the Dark: Finding healing and hope in sharing our sadness, grief, trauma, and pain” by Jeffrey Munroe
I asked Marilyn what it means to trust God after the horrific happens: “A friend said something about trust that has stayed with me. She said when you trust someone you don’t trust ‘that,’ you trust ‘them.’ You don’t trust that they won’t do something that hurts you. You trust them – even when those things happen, who they are is still something you can invest your trust in. Who rather than what is what matters. Having said that, I believe trusting God has much to do with my conviction that life is a journey, or, as I sometimes say, that we are on assignment here. What we see is not the whole story. We go through things here, and then we got to go home.”
Her words echo Paul’s famous words in 1 Corinthians 13: Now we see in a mirror dimly; then we will see face to face.
“It’s helpful to step back,” Marilyn said, “and widen the frame and say, ‘There is a much bigger story that I am a part of. God has offered me this time of earth, and I will more fully understand what it’s about when it’s over.’ In the middle of it, we know bad things are going to happen. That’s part of the deal. If our trust in God is based on bad things not happening, our trust is pretty fragile. It’s hard to move from trusting in the sense of feeling protected to trusting in the way that says finally, ‘I know in whom I have believed.’ Anyone you love will disappoint you at certain times. But love is resilient. That’s not in 1 Corinthians 13, but it should be: Love is patient, love is kind, love is resilient…Love says, ‘I trust you, we’ll move through this, and we’ll move beyond it.’ A lot of Christian theology overemphasizes God’s imminence and forgets God’s transcendence and sovereignty.”