An Umbrella in the Storm

September is over, and I am breathing a sigh of relief. As a child September was my favorite month, because it’s my birthday month. However, throughout the years I’ve lost several extended family members during the month of September. Beginning in 2018, I had a family funeral every September for three consecutive years. In the words of the great Michael Scott, “I’m not superstitious, but I’m a little stitious,” so I always feel like I’m looking over my shoulder for a lurking tragedy from September 1st to the 30th.

Every September I reflect on the loved ones the Oberg family has lost. My cousin Jared, who died of cancer in his thirties (which, at age 20, seemed so old, and now at age 33 seems so tragically young), left behind a wife and four children, the youngest only five years old. My uncle David was killed in an unexpected airplane accident, and his wife, three children and many grandchildren, including a granddaughter who he never got to meet, miss him dearly.

My Grampy Clyde lived to age 94…perhaps too long, if you asked his opinion. In the last few years of his life, he felt the frustration of a sound mind bound by a deteriorating body, and began to feel like he would like to move on from this life, to be reunited with his friends and family and relieved from pain.

“Baby Clyde,” as my cousin’s son will always be known in my heart, lived only eight months. As a mother of five, my mind cannot comprehend the grief that accompanies losing one so young.

Given the sheer size of my extended family, I’ve actually experienced relatively few losses. Others have experienced far more. But whenever I think on these tragedies, I have to grapple with the question: why do bad things happen to good people? And of course, that question’s brother: why does God allow bad things to happen to good people?

Spoiler alert: I can’t answer that question in this column, as much as I wish I could. In all my mental wrestling I’ve never been able to understand why I am lucky enough to have five beautiful, healthy, living children while others struggle with infertility or endure the pain of losing a child or have to arrange their lives around the management of a child’s chronic illness.

Matthew 5:45 reads, “your father in Heaven…makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and the unjust.”

I believe in an all-knowing and all-seeing God. But I don’t believe in an all-controlling God. I don’t believe in the adage “everything happens for a reason.” I believe in agency, and I believe that God allows his children to use their agency, even when they hurt each other with it. I believe in a God that doesn’t often intervene in the face of randomness and chaos. Yet I believe God is not an unfeeling being: I believe in a God who weeps.

I sometimes find the comparison of my life to others’ can draw me away from God. I still pray that I will be able to be patient when my four-year-old is having a meltdown in the public library, and I pray that I will be able to find my wallet when I’ve misplaced it in my house for the forty-seventh time and it is really stressing me out. But sometimes, I feel a little ashamed, asking the Lord for help with something so simple when somewhere in the world, children are starving to death and women are being abused. However, God invites us to come to him and share with him our whole selves: good, bad, and ugly. As we draw near unto him, He will draw near unto us.

I have had to accept that my ways are not the Lord’s ways (Isaiah 55:8), and that when it comes to many tragedies and atrocities, I don’t understand the “why.” In the next life, I expect to have some frank conversations with my Father about that.

In this life, however, I have to come to terms with the fact that faith means not knowing or understanding, and clinging to God anyway.

I’ve decided, instead of wondering where God is every September when I mourn my loved ones, I’m going to try harder to be God’s hands here on Earth. I invite you to do the same. When there isn’t anything we can do to change bad circumstances, we can offer our support. It’s okay if in your prayers you tell God you don’t understand this tragedy. Ask Him how you can help.

Though we cannot stop the rain, perhaps we can hold an umbrella in the storm.

Rachel Kenley Fry is a stay-at-home mom of five who loves to write. She also loves to sing and is excited that practices for the Community Messiah start this week! She is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.