“Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.” (Psalm 23:4)
When healing doesn’t come the way we expect, when prayers aren’t answered in our time, our faith journey takes an unexpected turn.
I’ve written a great deal about my family’s journey through cancer and deployment, about finding joy in life’s hard places. But let’s be honest: my soldier’s return and my daughter’s cancer weren’t the fairy-tale ending I imagined. Instead, they ushered in a new chapter filled with therapy sessions, ongoing medical checkups, and the constant shadow of tomorrow’s uncertainties. They also brought the unexpected – survivor’s guilt and divorce.
I’m learning to find joy in this reality, not despite it.
When I talk about “finding joy in everyday moments,” it’s because I know firsthand how challenging that can be amid pain. Life isn’t clean. Happily-ever-afters aren’t endings at all, but rather continued journeys toward a new normal. The messy middle places of life are messy. It’s not happiness I seek anymore – it’s the ability to live authentically in these spaces where celebration and sorrow coexist, where new beginnings intertwine with lives well-lived.
Sometimes we need to step beyond comfort to find the authentic faith that can hold both our celebration and our sorrow.
Wrestling With God’s Promises
The first time my daughter was diagnosed with cancer at six months old, I KNEW without a doubt that God would give her the miraculous healing I had seen Him give others. After all, I had done my time for Him – I’d attended seminary, served on the mission field, and we were working toward being full-time missionaries. This would be one more experience to add to our prayer journal of answered prayers.
I’d forgotten that sometimes how God answers isn’t how we want Him to. I believed my daughter would be healed right up until the moment they called me back and said the removal of the tumor along with her eye was a success. In that moment I collapsed. I couldn’t see that my daughter was healed because she wasn’t healed in the way I demanded of God.
For the next year, I walked around in a daze, feeling utterly forsaken and abandoned. I was angry at the Holy Spirit who didn’t move as I expected. Others came alongside me and prayed. I didn’t turn them away, but I wouldn’t join in.
Finding God’s Grace in the Shadows
In the story of Lazarus in John 11, I found a strange comfort. When Jesus heard Lazarus was sick, Scripture says He loved them and He waited. In my world, and I am sure in Martha’s as well, “He waited” does not communicate love.
Jesus did not arrive until four days after Lazarus died. Martha was the first to greet Him and the first to ask, “Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died.” Jesus did not rebuke her. Instead, He listened, and in verse 35, it says He wept.
The God who wept with Martha and Mary is the same God who weeps with us when healing doesn’t come. Christ loved Lazarus, Martha, and Mary. He grieved with them. He hurt because they hurt even though He knew the miracle He was about to perform. The coming resurrection of Lazarus could not bring comfort to his sisters because they could not understand it. Their pain was real, and Jesus hurt with them. With them. With me.
Unlike Job’s friends who offered hollow explanations and assigned blame for lack of faith or unconfessed sins, we need to acknowledge a profound truth: the will of God sometimes includes suffering. This isn’t because God delights in our pain, but because God’s wisdom operates in the spiritual realm beyond our understanding.
Ultimate Healing vs. Immediate Relief
For many years, I struggled with the reality of wounds, both physical and internal, that don’t heal. I wanted to witness and live a miracle. I wanted the absence of suffering.
What I discovered instead was a different kind of healing – not the erasure of physical scars, but a deeper spiritual healing of my own heart. I learned that God’s grace is sufficient even when pain remains. As the Spirit of God worked in me, I began to see that healing isn’t always about physical recovery, but sometimes about finding peace amid the unchangeable.
Jesus Christ Himself, when facing the cross, prayed that this cup might pass from Him. Even He felt the weight of suffering. Yet through His suffering, we received the ultimate healing – reconciliation with God.
The Myth of Guaranteed Healing
My children have experienced their own messy middle places.
Our hearts, years later, after the death of a young friend remain shattered. Our relationships ebb and flow as we learn to navigate the instability of our family and what it means to trust again. What once felt safe is now full of uncertainty. In this space, we have learned to ask confronting questions about faith, healing, and the nature of God himself.
When fear threatens to overwhelm us in these uncertain moments, we can find strength in Bible verses about faith over fear that remind us God is present even when healing doesn’t come.
The God we encounter in Scripture isn’t always the one we expect:
“I form the light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create disaster; I, the Lord, do all these things.” -Isaiah 45:7
It’s easy to love a God who does what we want, to understand a deity who swoops down to tidy up our mess with miraculous healings and answered prayers. But that’s not the God of Scripture.
Healing doesn’t always come. Prosperity and happiness aren’t guaranteed rewards for correct prayers or faithful tithing. Tidy faith crumbles in the face of tragedy.
In these raw moments, I find myself navigating new normals, searching for joy in both days filled with laughter and ones heavy with grief. My faith has deepened, paradoxically, even as my trust wavers. As we grappled with the loss of our friend– a healing we never even had time to pray for – I wanted to snatch the reins back from God and rewrite the story.
I long still for the fairy tale ending, for resurrection now, for one more glimpse of a smile I’ll never see again on this earth. Sometimes I wonder: are God’s plans better than mine?
Finding Purpose When Healing Doesn’t Come
I’m finding a new normal. I’m searching for joy in everyday places, past the broken promises and broken dreams. Beyond the shattered marriage and graveside prayers.
Sometimes the healing we pray for doesn’t come in the form we expect. I learned this through finding peace with difficult decisions that seemed to contradict everything I’d been taught about faith and commitment.
Dana Portwood wrote in “Stumbling through Lent” that “Faith is a series of little deaths and rebirths, each one bringing us around closer to the center.” I’m clinging to this truth for my children, hoping that through tragedy they’ll discover a God who’s big enough to hold both their pain and their questions. I’m holding onto this truth myself, even when my heart wants to let go.
The goodness of God doesn’t mean freedom from pain. Sometimes, in a similar manner to Christ’s journey to the cross, our path leads through suffering before reaching resurrection. Along the way, God provides good gifts we might otherwise miss:
- A deep connection with others who suffer
- Greater empathy for the broken
- A more authentic faith stripped of performance
- The ability to find joy in small moments
- A clearer vision of what truly matters
When healing doesn’t come, we discover that God walks with us through the valley rather than simply removing us from it. The name of the Lord becomes our shelter rather than our magical solution. We learn to trust not in specific outcomes, but in the character of our Heavenly Father who holds all things.
But how do we actually do this? Why doesn’t God answer when we really need him to? How do we trust God when healing doesn’t look like we expected?
When our prayers feel empty and God seems silent, learning how to find true peace through prayer can anchor us in His presence even when we can’t understand His ways.
God dwells in life’s messy middle places with us. That’s where we find profound beauty. Though He isn’t painting over our mess with picture-perfect solutions, He’s present – orchestrating both the pain and the promise. This is the God who said no to His only son’s plea to avoid the cross. The God who wraps His arms around us without turning away from our suffering. The God who wept at his friend’s grave.
Joy isn’t the absence of sorrow. It’s deeper and richer because of the pain we’ve walked through. Life is fuller because of those who walk through suffering with us.
What Does It Mean to Find Joy in Pain
JWhen healing doesn’t come as expected, we’re left with questions that have no easy answers. How do we reconcile a loving God with ongoing suffering? What does faith look like when our prayers feel unheard?
These aren’t theological puzzles to solve but mysteries to live within. The messy middle places teach us that God’s presence doesn’t always equal God’s intervention. Sometimes the miracle isn’t the healing we wanted but the strength to endure what we never thought we could.
Have you experienced times when healing didn’t come as expected? How did it shape your faith journey?