Some things in life simply don’t make sense. I don’t understand how we’re standing on the earth at this moment as it spins 1,000 miles per hour and we don’t feel a thing. I don’t understand how there are 60,000 miles of blood vessels in my body and they’re all working together perfectly to supply blood flow and I’m not having to extend any sort of effort. I don’t understand how why some really bad things were allowed to happen to people I love.

Have you ever been there? Standing in this place in life where you don’t understand WHY and HOW this could happen. Left questioning if God is really for you, then why did this happen? Asking how a God who loves could sit and watch this happen and do nothing.

Earlier this month while speaking at a conference in Indianapolis I met this strikingly beautiful woman named Lindsey. She was just one of those people who had a presence about her. She walked with tremendous confidence, yet a humble, gentle spirit. I immediately liked her. After my speech she hugged me and said “you said something for every single one of us.” My initial thought was, what a kind thing to say, but then I felt it. There was more. Something more in her voice I didn’t understand.

I came home and connected with her on FaceBook. I quickly learned she and her husband travel and have a boat and 2 big beautiful golden retrievers. Then the story started unfolding. Last week they received a foster child. A little girl with a broken past and aching heart joined their family. But there was more. I knew there was more. I could sense the meaning in her posts. With a little trolling and scrolling I found them … photos of beautiful Lindsey from a few years ago holding a 6 year old little girl with no hair. And in that moment I knew, she had lost a child.

She had gone through the unimaginable. She has experienced pain on a level no mom should ever experience. We began messaging and I fumbled for my words to acknowledge her journey. She replied “I live every day knowing that it may not make sense now, but some day when we are reunited, I will understand it all.”

She is saying I don’t understand but I trust one day I will. I trust one day it will all make sense. So here she is, not only continuing to live, but living BIG, taking in a little girl to give her the family she’s never had, to protect her and keep her safe, to love her and give her a future.

I’m left looking at the things in my own life that I don’t understand, saying YO PAMELA GET IT TOGETHER … GIRL LIVE YOUR LIFE.

How many times do we get hung up on why and how, and we waste perfectly good days of life being angry or frustrated. Have you ever let a broken appliance rock your world? Seriously the washing machine goes out and the dirty clothes quickly pile up, the refrigerator stops working and $200 worth of groceries spoil, the garbage disposal jams and there’s unknown objects awaiting your hands in dirty water. It’s like a personal attack on you as a human being! And things seem to happen in threes, right? Three bad things all happen in a series of events. Or we have a fender bender. We lose our wallet. We get a speeding ticket. Our phone takes a flying leap out of our hand onto the concrete and the earth stands still as you pick it up and ever so slowly turn it over, holding your breath saying please no, please no, no, no, no and yip, it’s shattered. Dang it! Why?!!!! Why me? Why today?

Then we spend the remainder of the day ticked off over our bad luck and what it will cost us. GET A GRIP WOMAN! SERIOUSLY. What first world problems have you let get your panties in a wad this week while people like Lindsey are choosing to wake up each day and say “I don’t understand it now, but I trust one day I will.”

This is the kind of faith we’re called to. This is the kind of trust God is working to develop in you. He doesn’t expect you to understand it because you won’t.

I Peter 4:19 says “Those who suffer according to God’s will should commit themselves to their faithful Creator and continue to do good.” The Message translation says “So if you find life difficult because you’re doing what God said, take it in stride. Trust him. He knows what he’s doing, and he’ll keep on doing it.”

I recently heard a sermon by Joyce Meyer where she shared her testimony of sexual abuse her entire childhood at the hands of her own father. What she endured is unfathomable to me. She spent decades of her life asking God why. Why did you not protect me? I was innocent? Why did you not stop it? Why God? If you love me, if you are all knowing and all powerful, why would you not do something. I don’t understand. Her story speaks directly and intimately to so many having endured similar abuse and oh how God is using her to spread a life changing message today. She shares how God didn’t get her out of it, but he gave her the strength to get through it. She also shares how now, looking back she sees how she is a better person because it happened. The worst things imaginable have made her better. She admits that she doesn’t understand it, but she no longer has to understand it.

Do you have to understand everything? I don’t understand how the world is spinning at 1,000 miles per hour at this moment, I don’t understand how my lungs are breathing, my heart is pumping, and I have 60,000 of blood vessels inside my body all with a purpose. I don’t understand it, but I believe it.

You may not understand how things are working in your life. You may not understand why some things have happened. Things may happen today that simply make no sense to you. But will you lean in and trust that you have a mighty and powerful heavenly father who knows it all, sees it all, and is working it all together for good. You may not understand it this side of heaven, but one day you will. So meanwhile, don’t waste a single precious day you are given on this earth trying to make sense of it all. All that questioning and reasoning has never gotten me any where, has it you?

If God isn’t getting you out of it, then he’s giving you the strength to get through it. If it’s not good yet, then God’s not done yet. Your understanding is not required. Your trust however is. Trust him and keep on doing good.