Lessons Learned in the Absence of Answers

Wrote this a while back - about a year and a half ago - revisited/edited it this AM & tho't to share it here:

Lessons Learned in the Absence of Answers

Have you ever noticed that the more you know it seems like the more questions you have?

It's been several months since we were led to believe our daughter had a potentially serious medical condition. In a quest for answers, we’ve met with well respected doctors at prestigious medical facilities and she has undergone tests with the use of amazing technology. Fortunately most "news" - and the most recent diagnosis – are encouraging and seem to “make sense”. Praise God! Yet, still we have a lot more information but few solid answers.

This experience causes me to consider how creative and personal God is with respect to how He teaches us. --- And to consider as well that in our attempt to train up our children in the way they should go, if a child is struggling in his schoolwork to “get the answers”, perhaps we should not assume he isn’t learning -- no matter how frustrating that process is. Rather consider that he may be learning much more than we realize….because he/she is persevering in the pursuit of those answers (struggling!)

Recently, on a trip to a lab for more medical testing, the audio book we intended to listen to didn’t work in the car. In frustration I thought of the wasted school time. But it was during this precious “wasted time” that my daughter shared with me something she’d been talking to God about…..something to the effect that she wanted Him to be glorified with whatever it is she has and about how she realized that her life is not her own because it belongs to God.

An e-mail from a friend reminded me what a blessing it is when God allows our children to share with us what He tries to teach us all along. She encouraged me by indicating that by my life, teaching and example, my daughter is seeing the heart and eyes and will of God! ---Wow! I was taken back by that!!..... because that would mean God is using me to teach her what I at times don’t know or understand myself!

2 Corinthians 12:9 (NIV) But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me.

The more desperate we are for answers, the more fervently we tend to seek them out, and therein seems to lie passion for learning. If we try hard enough, we may eventually find the answers we’re looking for. However, it seems to me that God intended for the pursuit of the answers to the really big questions in life to ultimately lead us to Him and that the more passionately we pursue them, the better we’ll get to know Him and the more we’ll want to be like Him. Before we know it, we have a relationship rather than a religion and even though we may not know or understand all the answers, so much of what we do know seems to finally make so much sense!

I don’t claim to understand how it all works. I admit I find it perplexing that His power is made perfect in weakness (so very opposite of “survival of the fittest” and a concept beautifully illustrated in creation Flowers/bees!, etc.) -- and that many valuable lessons seem to be learned even in the absence of answers. And as I consider the incredible(!) transformation a caterpillar undergoes during the struggle it must go through to become the beautiful butterfly God intended it to be, I’m encouraged!! Because that just seems so like God….. inconceivably creative and incredibly personal.

Jeremiah 29:13 (NIV) You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.

Proverbs 2:3-6 (NIV) and if you call out for insight and cry aloud for understanding, and if you look for it as for silver and search for it as for hidden treasure, then you will understand the fear of the LORD and find the knowledge of God. For the LORD gives wisdom, and from his mouth come knowledge and understanding.