I struggled in the days after Josiah to enter back into American suburban life. To sit and chat with mom friends who complained about the way their in-laws feed their child too much sugar or the fact that their house had oak cabinets when they preferred white. I sat and empathized while inside I felt more and more alienated in the world I knew.
It was hard for me to engage in carefree conversation or listen to complaints I perceived to be meaningless. I began to feel resentment that those around me were naive to the trauma of Josiah’s birth day and the horrors I endured in the hospital. I felt alone as I began to process the injustice of his death and find a way to forgive and fight, heal and honor in the aftermath.
One day my dear neighbor handed me the book, Kisses from Katie by Katie Davis. I remember thinking it was odd she lent me a book about a young woman moving to Africa when I was consumed with child loss. But I was drawn to it all the same and immediately opened the pages in search of escape.
I found what I was looking for.
In her words I escaped to a world where death and injustice ran rampant. Where people wore sorrow and struggle like a yoke around their neck. Where children were sick and eating mud cakes and…dying. All while helpless mommas begged God to save them when the hospitals couldn’t always and wouldn’t always.
Oh how I felt I belonged there, in those pages. In the midst of red dirt and tragedy.
God wrapped my heart in hope and whispered to my soul as I read her words. I knew I wasn’t alone. The same God who allowed innocent children to die in Uganda allowed my child the same here. Not everyone who prays fervently for their desired outcome experiences prayers answered in the way they wish. When the ending I asked for didn’t happen, I began my journey of searching for God’s goodness even when my life didn’t feel good.
Little did I know, Katie Davis Majors was wrestling with the same questions a world away…
This past summer I was selected to be part of the launch team for Katie’s new book. The evening before Josiah’s 3rd birthday, an early copy of Daring to Hope was delivered to my doorstep for review. On a day of deep sorrow, I would again find belonging amidst the pages of hers.
What makes Daring to Hope so powerful is that her story is my story, and maybe even your story too. It is the same story as all of us who have wrestled with God in our pain and begged him to show his face in the midst of it. When we do, he draws us close and reminds us he is who he says he is. The same faithful God who provided Abraham a lamb in the thicket, compassion to Mary of Bethany, and himself to a panicked Peter battling a storm on the Sea of Galilee. The same God of the Bible is running to us today when we cry out for him.
Have you ever cried out to God? Questioned his goodness when things were anything but good. Felt unloved when your prayers were not answered as you hoped?
If so, please, please read Daring to Hope. Her story is an inspiring example of how God can take a tenderhearted faith and embolden it to live with hope. Suffering is the ground where we make a choice to live out our faith. We either chose to believe God is who he says he is or we don’t. But if you choose to believe he is good, even in the midst of doubt, he will give you glimmers of his goodness.
“But this is what I know: God is who He says He is. In the hurt and the pain and the suffering, God is near, and He is good, even when the ending isn’t.
Our pain does not minimize His goodness to us but, in fact, allows us to experience it in a whole new way.”
-Katie Davis Majors
Daring to Hope: Finding God’s Goodness in the Broken and Beautiful will be released on October 3, 2017. You can preorder your copy here at Katie’s Website and receive a free gift from Amazima!
Katie Davis Majors, I want to thank you.
Thank you sweet sister for sharing the vulnerable places, the dark places, because as you so richly expressed, those too can be the sweetest of places.
I often refer to you as my soul sister when I discuss your words with my husband. As I closed your book one night, I sighed to him that I wished we were neighbors and my kitchen looked out on your sunflowers also. That is when he reminded me I have all of eternity to be your neighbor. Isn’t this the community you speak of in Daring to Hope when you quoted Dietrick Bonhoeffer? That, “through Christ we do have one another…completely and for all eternity.”
Dear sister, what a reward you are. May the goodness of God shine on in your life. May your love affair with Jesus ignite the desire for others to share in an intimate relationship with the savior also. May your message in Daring to Hope bring courage and perseverance for those willing to discover true hope.