“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 husband’s return and my daughter’s healing weren’t the fairy-tale endings 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 eventually divorce.
I’m learning to find joy in this reality, not despite it.
The Myth of Guaranteed Healing
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 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.
My children have experienced their own middle places.
Our hearts remain shattered years after the death of a young friend. Our relationships ebb and flow as we learn to navigate the instability of our family following divorce and what it means to trust again. What once felt safe is now filled with uncertainty. In this space, we have learned to ask confronting questions about faith, healing, and the nature of God’s character.
“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 healing and answered prayers. But that’s not who I find in God’s Word. When healing doesn’t come, when physical healing seems elusive, we confront a deeper truth about our faith. Prosperity and happiness aren’t guaranteed rewards for correct prayers or faithful tithing. Tidy faith crumbles in the face of tragedy.
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.
Good Things in Painful Places
In the blog post Stumbling through Lent, Dana Portwood wrote, “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.
Learning to Trust When Answers Don’t Come
Just as Christ had greater plans for Lazarus that required his death first, He has great plans for our family. I do not believe that God causes pain for our growth, but I do believe He allows it and uses it. Just as He allowed Lazarus to die so that He could show God’s power through resurrection, He has something in store for my daughter and our family.
This is where faith becomes real – not in the sunshine of answered prayers, but in the darkness of waiting and wondering. The Apostle Paul understood this when he wrote about his own thorn in the flesh. Three times he pleaded with the Lord to take it away, but instead of physical healing, he received this promise: “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9).
Living in the Tension
My daughter is now cancer-free, but she still bears the physical marks of her journey. Some might see this as partial healing, but I’ve come to see it differently. God brought healing, just not in the package I demanded.
For the longest time after my daughter’s cancer diagnosis, I did not want to give God control. I wanted control. My anger was intense. I could no longer trust someone with my daughter’s life who had allowed their own Son to die on the cross. The cross no longer represented hope and forgiveness for me; instead, it represented a God who couldn’t possibly feel pain and loss. I was so consumed by my own story I could no longer see the truth in anyone else’s.
I’ve come a long way since then. It was a slow process. But like the disciples on the road to Emmaus who couldn’t recognize Jesus walking beside them in their grief, I eventually had my eyes opened to see that God had been present all along. God in His grace never let go of me.
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.
The profound beauty of life’s middle places is that God dwells there with us. 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 at a place with scenic views.
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.
When healing doesn’t come in the form we expected, we’re invited to look beyond our immediate circumstances to the God who remains faithful even when the story takes unexpected turns. This journey isn’t easy—there are days when doubt feels more accessible than faith—but I’m learning that the God who meets us in our suffering is worthy of our trust, even when healing doesn’t come as we hoped.
Have you experienced times when healing didn’t come as expected? How did it shape your faith journey?