Even in Suffering, I Chose Faith

There were many moments when anger at God would have made sense.

Scripture tells us there is “a time to weep and a time to mourn” (Ecclesiastes 3:4), and my life has known those seasons well. Miscarriages — hopes carried quietly and then entrusted back to God in silence. Deaths in my family that reshaped love and left absence where presence once lived. Chronic illness that arrived not as a single moment, but as a slow reordering of my body, my energy, and my expectations.

There have been seasons of marital strain, when love required perseverance more than feeling. There has been the reality of parenting a medically complex child — the vigilance, the fear, the grief of letting go of the life you imagined while fighting fiercely for the one entrusted to you. There has been family division and misunderstanding — wounds that come not from enemies, but from those closest to the heart.

There have been times when my heart has been deeply broken.
And yet, I did not turn my anger toward God.

That does not mean I did not question. The Psalms are full of lament, and I found my own voice there: “How long, O Lord?” (Psalm 13:1). But even in the asking, I did not believe God was cruel. I did not believe suffering meant abandonment. I believed, somehow, that God was still good — even when life was not.

Like Peter, I did not always understand what the Lord was doing — but I knew where else would I go? “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life” (John 6:68). I did not cling to the idea that faith would spare me suffering. I learned instead that faith anchors you within it.

As I have come to understand the Catholic faith, I have seen that it does not promise an easy life. It promises a God who enters into suffering with us. “He was despised and rejected… a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief” (Isaiah 53:3). Christ does not explain suffering away — He redeems it.

I have learned that God is not the author of death or brokenness. “God did not make death” (Wisdom 1:13). Sin fractures the world, and suffering follows — but God meets us there. In hospital rooms. In quiet grief. In marriages that must be rebuilt slowly. In the long nights of fear for a child you love more than your own life.

There were moments when prayers were not answered as I begged them to be. But I came to understand that unanswered prayer is not unheard prayer. “The Lord is close to the brokenhearted” (Psalm 34:18). Not distant. Not indifferent. Close.

Even now, as I prepare to be received fully into the Church, I do not come because life has been gentle. I come because I have learned to trust that God is who He says He is. That love has the final word. That suffering, united to Christ, is never meaningless. That the Cross is not the end of the story.

“We know that in all things God works for good for those who love Him” (Romans 8:28). Not that all things are good — but that God is always good, even when life is not.

My faith has not been loud or triumphant. It has been quiet, steady, sometimes weary — but faithful. A trust formed not by comfort, but by endurance. And now, standing at the threshold of full communion with the Church, I choose to place that trust where it has always been leading: at the feet of Christ — crucified, risen, and present.