Patty Morin lives with unspeakable grief. In 2023, her daughter Rachel, a 37-year-old mother of five, was murdered on a hiking trail in Maryland. Because Patty was willing to talk about it, you can listen and learn. To her, pain and suffering do not speak the last word, thanks be to God.
Patty has testified before Congress and granted interviews to journalists, describing the circumstances that led to Rachel’s death. What is less reported is Patty’s summary of her journey through the valley of the shadow of death. “Even though I have walked fifty years as a Christian, for the first time I saw God,” she said. “I realized that God was God, that He was sovereign over all things, and I just wanted to fall on my face and worship God.” This response would be hard to grasp even if you spoke to Patty personally.
Psychologist Larry Crabb offers some insight. He wrote the book SoulTalk after his cancer diagnosis and his brother’s death in a plane crash. He explains that some versions of religion prompt you to deny such pain and pretend you are not hurting. Suffering must mean you’re not living right (the mistake of Job’s friends). So, you soldier on, nursing your pain alone. “That leads to pride or despair,” Crabb writes, “never to brokenness. Religion keeps the power of God merely trickling through our lives, like water through a twisted hose. Only brokenness straightens out the kinks. Then revival comes. Living water gushes. What is most alive within us, a passionate desire for God himself, comes pouring out.”
We see this desire in the prophet Habakkuk even as he witnessed injustice, violence, and deprivations. The Babylonians threatened his nation. Why would God allow it? Through his brokenness he wrote, “Though the fig tree should not blossom and there be no fruit on the vines… and there be no cattle in the stalls, yet I will exult in the Lord, I will rejoice in the God of my salvation. The Lord God is my strength, and He has made my feet like hinds’ feet, and makes me walk on my high places” (Hab. 3:17-19).
I have witnessed survivors of disasters turn Godward. Like Patty, brokenness caused them to experience God in a new way. Brokenness leads to clarity – you see God in His sovereignty and your own need for mercy. It does not make the pain less real. It does bring Jesus’ death and resurrection into sharper focus, because with that victory He declares there is more to life and reality than the bitter suffering you endure today.
You have a choice. To ignore your pain or find fault only delays healing. Rather, seek the God who loves you and gives you strength to walk on high places. The view is clearer from there.