Well, sure you are.

Besides my faith, the one thing that has helped me not stay in a continual state of being a victim is knowing I am not alone.

Countless numbers of mothers have lost their children over the centuries. I think about the mothers who lost 2 and sometimes 3 sons during the Civil War. I think about the fatal diseases that took young lives. The accidents. The premature births.

There has been suffering since the beginning of time.

I wasn’t prepared. Mostly because life today is so different in many ways.

Or else we are busier than ever and don’t have much time to think about the what ifs.

Either way, things happen to other people, right?

And some parts of my faith made me feel insulated. After all, I prayed.

But then it happened on that warm, September afternoon. Death came to the door, knocked it down, and with it came the end of innocence.

We wonder where God is?

Well, where was he when sons bled to death on the fields of Gettysburg?

Where was he when cancer took one child and spared another?

Where was he when a mother labored for hours, only to hold a lifeless baby?

Where was he when my son decided to take his life?

All I know is God sees and he knows.  He promises to comfort. He promises one day we will understand.

We have to see beyond here and now or we will be hopeless. Hope sees beyond here and now. And the God of all creation promises he will fix it and make it right. All tears will be wiped away. All sorrow will be turned to joy.

We have to wait. And waiting is very hard sometimes.

If I hate God for what he has allowed to happen, the rest of my life will be bitter misery. It does no good.

So I join with the multitudes since the beginning of time and say, though he slay me, yet will I trust in Him.

And I will wait.

No longer a victim. But full of hope and expectation.