What Personal Tragedy Teaches Me About Faith

“Blessed are they that mourn; for they shall be comforted.” — Matthew 5:4

I haven’t been as vocal and open about my faith as I used to be. When I was a new Christian four and a half years ago, I told everyone and posted on social media about it all the time. And while a lot of people don’t see anything wrong with that, I realized how insensitive and callous I could come off to people who had terribly traumatic experiences with the church, which are a lot of my friends.

I’m not out here posting about loving Trump and celebrating the overturning of Roe (because I don’t like either of those things), but I have been more cautious and tactful about how being super open about my faith or asking people if they want to come to church could come off to people I’ve been really close with.

I still believe, but I’m more private about it. But recently, the experiences of two of my friends who are very public about their faith. They were both my colleagues for two years, and I consider them friends.

And recently, they’ve undergone significant personal tragedy and hardships. One got diagnosed with breast cancer and has been undergoing chemotherapy on and off for years. Another just lost her son in a senseless tragedy.

I will refrain from divulging details about their personal tragedies as much as possible, but I’ll see their Instagram posts about how God got them through their cancer treatments or how they cling to God in a time of the most intense grief you can ever have as a parent.

Let me also preface that not everyone I know who has had awful things happen to them is religious or clings to faith. But there

I’ve been distant from God recently for a terrible reason. Some of it is feeling disaffected with the church and super conservative evangelical Christians. But a lot of it is also that in terms of personal circumstances, my life is going much better than it had in the past. My relationship is like any other — but I feel like it is progressing as my fiancee and I work out differences and compatibility. I have a job I enjoy in school leadership. I just got my Master’s Degree with good grades, and I’m currently also in evening law school. On top of all that, I’ve been running competitively, and that’s going well again, too.

I would never outwardly say or think “I don’t need God.” But sometimes, it’s even worse — I’ll feel like I don’t need God. I will revel in positive circumstances and accomplishments and sometimes not credit God for getting me there — which is not a great thing to do as a Christian, but I’m just being honest about my sometimes clinging to these idols.

What my friends are teaching me is we cling to God and our faith in the times we’re the most in need. And the time I clung to God most was in a time I endured significant grief and personal hardship, although not to the scale of losing my child or having cancer.

I won’t get into too many details, but three and a half years ago, my life was an absolute mess. I lost a lot of friends and was ostracized by people I thought I had deep relationships with. I felt incredibly misunderstood and struggled with my identity, and I questioned every day whether I was a waste of space and whether I was really good for the world. It wasn’t thinking about suicide, but rather just feeling like a complete liability to the people who cared for me. I felt like I wasn’t easy to love at all, and I felt like I put fire to everything I touched.

There are two things that got me through that period of my life: my relationships and my faith. The former I see as gifts from God in a Catholic kind of way.

“Casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you,” 1 Peter 5:7 says.

But at that time, and in life in general, casting all my anxieties, worries, and pain on God was significantly easier said than done. I intellectually knew that God still loved me, but I had trouble internalizing it. But I kept coming back to God for a simple reason — I didn’t have anything else at the time. I didn’t have a life I liked, and every day felt like hell.

My faith gave me the assurance that everything would be alright, not because it would be much better in the afterlife, but because there was a lot more to the world God created than the small, chaotic space I was living in. And it was true — there was a better world outside that space.

There is a lot more maturity in my faith now. It’s not the completely blown away, born-again feeling of being a new Christian where you don’t shut up about your faith to everyone within earshot.

For most people, your life doesn’t really change. Circumstances are still difficult. You still need to navigate this broken world that can be incredibly harsh, grueling, and not make sense at all.

I learned it’s not circumstances that change. Contrary to what some preachers say, God isn’t going to shower you with millions of dollars and Lamborghini just because you believe in Him.

It’s you who changes. Faith becomes a coping mechanism and so much more for life’s hardships when nothing else makes sense, or when your life is absolutely terrible. Being a Christian has made me rethink a lot of interpersonal interactions and how I could be a better neighbor to the people around me, show God’s unconditional love, and just be kind in a world that’s increasingly lacking in kindness.

I have an atheist friend who sees organized religion as a fundamental evil in the world that has killed countless, if not billions of people. He doesn’t understand why people need to believe a very set guideline of rules and fairy tales to be a good person — why can’t you just be a person and take the good from every religion, without believing in the “other stuff?”

I know what he’s talking about when he says the “other stuff.” It’s the conservative and out-of-touch views on abortion, same-sex marriage and relationships, and sex before marriage. Since I’m not in step with those views, my friend accuses me of cherry-picking what I want to believe and what I don’t want to believe from the Bible.

Honestly, I wonder whether he’s right. I struggle with whether you can call yourself a Christian and not be this super evangelical conservative. That’s why I’ve been a bit disillusioned with the church, but I’ll push back and say Christian culture is different from what the Bible says directly.

But I always have to remind myself of how God and my faith got me through the most terrible time period of my life. Yes, my life is in a much better place now, especially after I left the environment that caused so much of that pain and anguish.

But that was a time I had nothing else but God to get me through the day and moments of intense depression. And I remind myself constantly that all the career success, educational attainment, and loving relationships I have right now are also gifts from God. Plus, I wouldn’t be here if God didn’t get me through that intense time period of my life.

Going through personal tragedy and grief were the moments I needed God the most. They’re when my friends need God the most. When you wouldn’t have survived without God, it’s impossible not to believe.

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This post was previously published on MEDIUM.COM.

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