How Sweet the Bitter Fruit

Hours passed and it was time for everyone to go home while I stayed with Carlie through the night. “What‘s wrong with me, Mum?” she asked as I tucked her into the bed. “You’ve just got a little lump in your tummy,” I said, “and the doctors have to take it out.” She said no more, neither did I. “Where are you God?” I whispered searchingly as I lay next to my sleeping child that night. I truly felt like I’d lost Him, for when such fear and grief come, they shake you to the depths of your being, making you unable to see straight. So I wondered 'where was God when the bad news just kept coming?' First the tumor, then she’d have to lose her kidney, and then it had spread to her lung. My thoughts traveled back to the previous afternoon and I replayed conversations with the doctor. “Can’t you tell me anything good?” I had yelled at him as he delivered bad news after bad news to us. And where was God now, as I cried the whole night in this hospital room? As I watched my little girl sleep, I begged Him to show Himself. But there was no divine apparition, no sign He was near. There was just the loneliness of the dark hospital room, unfamiliar noises in the corridor outside, and long hours stretching for miles before me, in which to think about all the terrible things that could happen. On our tour of the Children’s Oncology ward the next day, I looked around the play room at all the photos of smiling, bald children. Behind every smile lurked a thousand tortures. Where was God among so much suffering? I felt all the pain as if it were a ten tone weight on my soul - the parents, grandparents, relatives, and friends. Even acquaintances, secretly thankful it wasn’t their child, yet equally fearful it could just as easily have been. Days later, when they took our Carlie into the operating room for the biopsy, John and I stayed till she was asleep. There she was, a tiny six year old package of gorgeous blonde hair, beautiful blue eyes, a kind and loving heart and a generous little soul, mature beyond her years. We walked backwards out of the room, our eyes never leaving the little motionless form on the enormous hospital bed. There was no more holding in of emotions. As the doors swung closed in our faces we collapsed in each other’s arms, crying without end. Where was God when an innocent child must suffer this way? We went straight to the hospital chapel. As we poured inside and fell on our knees before Jesus crucified, an old memory flashed in my mind’s eye. It was of Rebecca on her first day of kindergarten. When it came time for me to go, she cried desperately. She stretched her little arms out to me as the teacher pulled her gently away; her eyes imploring, How can you leave me here, Mum? At this moment in the chapel, I knew exactly how she had felt. Crying desperately, I stretched up my arms to God as my heart screamed, 'How could You leave me here on this earth?‘ I felt like I was in an exile - a dangerous place filled with pain and fear and horrible suffering wherever I turned. As I stared up at my beloved Jesus, hanging there on His piece of wood, I fleetingly wondered, could He have suffered more than us? Of course I knew He had, even though it was difficult at that moment to comprehend there could be greater pain than my own. “Bring something beautiful out of this ugliness, so it can be worth it,” I begged Him. Then it came...