Cancer took my Valentine, and God let it happen.

While that statement is painfully true and reflective of the true experience of countless Christians across the world, it still feels deeply dangerous to write.

As devout Christians, we are often not expected to be honest about our profound disappointments when things do not turn out as we prayed, fasted, believed, and hoped they would.

My dad was my Valentine for many years. Dad was Valentine to my mom (his beloved wife and now widow), my sister, and me. Beyond what he did for my mom, every year he made sure my sister and I received a rose and chocolates on Valentine’s Day to model the standard of care we should expect from our future husbands.

That alone should tell you what an exceptional man he was. He was remarkable! That’s why, when he fell ill, there was no prayer our family didn’t pray, no fast we didn’t do, and no room left for unbelief as we stormed heaven for his healing. Yet, God took him.

When prayer doesn’t change the outcome

My dad died a very slow and painful death, and I am keenly aware that God could have healed him. I don’t know why he didn’t, and, if I’m honest, the reason doesn’t matter; the outcome is what I have the biggest problem with.

• I would have preferred it if my daddy could walk me down the aisle on my wedding day.
• I would have preferred it if he could rub my tummy whenever I get pregnant.
• I would have preferred it if my children could meet him.
• I would have preferred it if he could travel the world with my mom, the love of his life.

God’s reasoning for taking Dad wouldn’t change the fact that my Valentine is gone. There will be no more roses and chocolates from him to me, and the knowledge and experience of that is deeply painful.

When pain is promised

As a grieving Christian, I’ve had to sit with the very heavy truth that in this world, it’s impossible to escape suffering. In John 16:33, we see Jesus telling the disciples this hard truth as time for His crucifixion drew near.

Jesus essentially said it is guaranteed that every human will experience pain, loss, disappointment, grief, and death (Psalm 90:10).

It doesn’t matter if you’re a Christian; in the same way, it didn’t matter that Jesus was 100% God. He was 100% God, but He was also 100% man (1 Timothy 2:15), and so he too suffered and died. Thankfully, this was not the end of the story.

When the Gospel brings comfort

If you had asked me five years ago whether the Gospel was relevant to the loss of a loved one, I would have struggled to answer. Without even realising it, I had minimized the Gospel’s relevance to my everyday Christian living.

I had relegated it to just a means of entry into the Kingdom, full stop.

Grief has reminded me that the Gospel is not peripheral to what we experience as believers. It’s extremely essential for us to make sense of it. I explore this more fully in my book, Grieving While Christian, but for now, let’s reflect on what the Gospel means for grief.

The Gospel is the story of God’s mission to restore the brokenness of creation, which humanity brought about through sin (Genesis 3; Romans 8:20–22).

God accomplished this by sending His Son, Jesus Christ, into the world as fully God and fully man (John 1:14). Jesus lived the perfect life no human ever could, then died as the ultimate sacrifice for the sin of humanity.

In this, he bore the fullness of God’s wrath so that those who place their faith in Him would not have to (Isaiah 53:5–6; 2 Corinthians 5:21). Instead of facing wrath, they’d receive eternal life, because their sin is no longer counted against them (Romans 8:1).

Jesus conquered death by rising on the third day (1 Corinthians 15:3–4) and ascended to the Father (Acts 1:9), from which He will one day return to fully judge evil and restore creation.

This would mark the end of our pain, tears, death, grief, and every other ill of life (Revelation 21:1–5). In this, we are assured that there is hope and a resolution for every terrible thing that has happened to us. Those things do not have the final word (Romans 8:18; Revelation 21:4). God will repay.

The Gospel means my father’s suffering was not meaningless (Romans 8:18). There is a planned resolution for all the pain he endured and the grief my family and I now carry.

When encouragement must be timely

Of course, when grief and injustice and loss are fresh and raw, the promise of future restoration can feel almost insulting. What we want in those moments is immediate relief from the pain we feel. Quite frankly, we want to know why God has failed us! How could we, as faithful servants of God, be made to suffer in this way? How could God be good and still allow evil?

The questions are endless, and I encourage believers to boldly ask them. God can handle it.

We can cry. We can mourn and rage, seek therapy, pray through clenched teeth, and lament honestly (Psalm 34:18; Lamentations 3:31–33). Scripture makes room for every wave of grief we will experience. In my book, I delve into the real, raw questions I asked in the earlier days of my grief journey, and share how I’m still standing today, firmly and fully persuaded that God is good all the time, and all the time, God is good.

When bad theology hurts

If you’ve been sold a Gospel that exempts the believer from pain, I really am sorry to hear that. As John Piper puts it, “bad theology dishonours God and hurts people.” It would make sense to abandon a faith that promised only good things when horrible things start to happen. Christianity, however, never promised this.

The hope we have as Christians is not that we would never suffer. It’s that resolution will come in God’s way, in His time, and according to His will. To be a Christian is to surrender to God entirely, even when His will hurts. This calls us to trust in His goodness, “play the long game,” set our minds on things above (Colossians 3:2), and remember that we are strangers and pilgrims passing through on our way to a better country (Hebrews 11:13–16). This is what faith requires!

Faith is not just about believing in God for earthly pleasures. By all means, enjoy those. I certainly do here and there. Here’s a clip of my trip to beautiful Barbados.

The point is, faith is about trusting God even when it’s hard and even though we’ll have to wait for the resolution of some things for an undetermined time.

Final thoughts

Yes! Death won this round, and my valentine is gone!

Equally true is this fact. The story doesn’t end there. In time, death itself will die (1 Corinthians 15:26), and God will bring finality to all the ills of this age.

My prayer is that everyone who made it this far in this story would respond to trouble as Jesus did. He looked beyond the temporal, just as the Hebrews 11 elders did.

When all they had was a future hope of a coming Messiah that they only heard of, did not see, and could not say exactly when He would arrive, they kept on trusting God.

All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance, admitting that they were foreigners and strangers on earth (Hebrews 11:13, NIV).

Let’s wait in God for our resolution. If you are not a Christian, I encourage you to find a Bible-believing church and try Jesus. He is a Wonderful Counselor (Isaiah 9:6), and He alone offers a peace that can coexist with sorrow (Philippians 4:7).

If this story encouraged you, you can find a fuller exploration of these themes in my book Grieving While Christian. God bless you!

Cancer Took My Valentine — and God Let It Happen was originally published in Koinonia on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.