Sometimes God Answers No

 Sometimes God Answers No

      There are a lot of things that I miss about Tiffanie, things that I'm pretty confident that will never be satisified on this side of heaven the way that they were on earth, things that only heaven can fulfill.  Things that are distinct, memories forever etched in my mind that will make me smile and laugh.  One of them was Tiff's love of childrens music. Children's ministry ran through Tiff's veins.  She was created by God to reach children with the Gospel, and one of those ways was song.  She would lead chapels and teach the children songs like 'Salvation', "Inch by Inch", 'God's Power', etc.  I can still picture her singing Jesus love is sweet and wonderful and leading the hand motions, or Baa Baa He's the Good Shepherd.  But the song that comes to mind the most is a song about prayer.  It goes like this, 'Sometimes God answers yes when I pray, sometimes God answers wait when I pray, sometimes God answers no, just because He loves me so, but I know that God always answers when I pray.'  I'm typing this out sitting on a plane traveling to British Columbia and small tears are coming down my cheeks.  I miss that woman singing that song, the smile that she made, how she handled the song visual.  I vividly remember her teaching the children that God always answers, but not always the way that we want Him to.  She will always been alive to me when I think of those memories.  I can see the twinkle in her brown hair, the way the moved across the room, the notes that she hit.  

      This is going to be one of those hard blogs to write, I can already feel it in my bones.  It's one that makes my hand shake as I try to type.  Blogging has been my therapy for grief, but at times it's so incredibly painful.  Why?  Because it causes me to rewind through hard things, dark days, and learning to lean on God when the answer that He is giving you isn't the one that you expected....when God gently says no.  I remember the day that the loudest voice in the world was a cancer doctor at York Hosptial.  He told us that Tiffanie had a rare, advanced, aggressive stage four cancer with no cure....and treatments were limited.  He basically gave us little to no hope, no sympathy other then a 'I'm sorry' that wouldn't win an Oscar needless to say.  The gavel of death and cancer rang in our hearts that day.  In one single day our entire world fell apart around us.  Every hope, every dream, everything that we were planning, saving, and working toward died.  It was almost as if a nuclear bomb had been laid against us, and there was nothing left in it's wake.  You could hear the sound of the explosion.  Take that back, you couldn't hear the sound of the explosion because the sound of our hearts breaking was louder.  

      The months that followed were filled with chemotherapy, immunotherapy, doctors, hosptials, side effects, scans, and most of all, months of prayer.  I've never prayed so much in my life.  God's people rallied around us in prayer.  We prayed for a miracle again and again.  We prayed that God would take the cancer away, that He would do something so big that only He could get the glory from it.  I begged God with hot tears, laying flat on the ground to take her cancer away.  I begged Him to give it to me.  There were the high moments when Tiff's cancer receeded and she almost returned back to her normal self.  Those months were celebrated.  It almost felt like God had done the impossible, that He removed the cancer.  I prayed each night with my three children that God would take the cancer away.  They remember that.  I vividly remember Titus saying one night that "momma is all better daddy',  but we knew that 100 out of 100 people that got Tiff's cancer died.  Zero people got better, zero people were healed on earth but we held out hope for a Noah sized miracle.  Yes, we had faith that God could do the impossible, but sometimes faith isn't telling God to do something, it's resigning yourself to something harder then the miracle....to the fact that God was going to use a stronger tool to bring Himself glory.  He was going to use suffering.   The greatest way our faith grew wasn't trusting God with the impossible and the miracle...it was trusting God knowing that death was the end of the road.  We prayed, you prayed, thousands prayed, it felt like the entire world prayed, and God answered.  Sometimes God answers yes when we pray.  Sometimes God answers wait when we pray.  And this time, God gently answered no, and seemingly without reason.

      Children hate hearing no.  My kids still say, "I know you will probably say no."  I hate hearing no.  Who wants to hear that no to have a third serving of ice cream or no to a raise or no when you ask a girl out.  We hate that answer.  Moreso I hate it, and yes, I'll use that phrase because it's how I felt, when God says no.  I'm mature enough in my faith to know that God answers no for a reason.  That He is the only Sovereign High King and that He does all things for His glory and our good.  I don't argue with that.  I know that He knows all things, that He has a plan.  Biblically that's true, doctrinally that's true, theologically that's true.....but practically the no almost hurts as much as the situation that's besetting us.  We are already reeling and we know that God sees our situation....and yet He says no.  Now, I don't mean no like God yells at us like a cruel master.  His no is gentle and not without His comfort or presence.  He doesn't say no and cast us off.  His nearness is often closest when He says no.  But that doesn't take the sting away from the no.  It doesn't remove the humanity and hurt from the no.  It doesnt mean that God provides us with the "who, what, when, where, and why" of the no.  Sometimes He simply says no without providing any more information.

      I saw the no coming for Tiffanie for ten months, but I held on to hope most of that time.  I battled my anxious heart, I swallowed my fears, and I treasured Tiffanie that entire time.....but November of 2024 God told my heart (not a verbal voice), "I'm taking your wife home soon."  I was startled by that.  I knew it was coming, you could tell that Tiffs physical body was failing.  She could barely walk.  Standing up to go to the bathroom became a labor.  Her breathing became so compromised.  I saw her and knew that God was saying no to her physical healing on earth.  Yes, I knew that God was going to heal her perfectly.  I had a lot of people tell me "God healed your wife."  I knew that, but to be quite frank with you, that wasn't what I was praying.  I didn't want Tiffanie healed in heaven, I wanted her healed on earth.  I wanted to laugh with her, love her, make her laugh, cook for her, rub her back, send her stupid dog facebook reels, and raise a family with her.  But God said no.  That no hurt.  Honestly, it made me a little bitter.  I love the Lord, I know He loves me.  Nothing was going to tear me away from Him as His child.. but that didn't mean I had to fake it and put on a happy face, instead I yelled at God, screamed at Him, shook my fist at heaven in displeasure.  I laid on my children's floor while they were alseep, weeping and telling God, "How could you do this to my babies?"

      That no came almost 18 monts ago.  What can I say looking at the no in the rearview mirror.  First, I still hate the no.  Have I pressed forward?  Yep.  Have I remarried?  Also yes.  Am I still bitter about it?  Yeah, a little (ok, some days a lot still).  But I have come to peace with God's no.  How have I come to peace with God's no?  First, I know my Father in heaven and I trust Him.  Trusting Him doesn't mean that I always agree with what He's doing or pretend to understand.  Despite all that we went through, I can attest to you that God is unwaveringly trustworthy.  We think that trust is something built in times of ease and peace.  No.  The depth of our trust in God is sometimes dug with the shovel of tribulation and suffering.  And let me tell you, I dug a deep hole.  I want to say something that might sound redunant, but I promise that it's not.  I wrote earlier that I trust Him, and that's true....but I learned that God is trustworthy.  Let me explain that.  Sometimes I trust someone but they turn out not to be tustworthy.  God can be trusted because He is without a doubt trustworthy (worthy of us trusting Him even when life is hard and the no is clear and evident).

      The next thing that I learned from God's no is that I can't see what tomorrow brings.  God has a plan in our life. Sometimes that plan is marked with tragedy and hurt, but there is still so much that God wants to do.  Your life won't be defined by your tragedy, but it will be changed.  All I could see in the moment was the present and the future scared me.  I think that's why the no was so scary.  Because the no canceled out my hope in the future.  The future was once bright, cancer and death made it a murky place.  I have to trust God in the present, and if I have to trust Him in my present that I'm currently living, you better believe that I have to trust Him in with my future.  At one time my future was doom and gloom.  I told God that there was no way He would be able to redeem this, to restore this, to bring back joy and laughter in my life.  In my soul I knew that wasn't true, but my grief clouded me from seeing that God still had good things on my horizon.  I didn't see a chance to love and be loved again.  I didn't see Leslie.  I didn't see my two bonus children.  I didn't see the birth of a ministry that would come from my hurt and sorrow.  I didn't see how God would restore what the locusts have ate and bring beauty from ashes.  Now, those things don't cancel out the old nor do they replace what I lost.  By no means.  Does it mean that I'm ok with how Tiffanie died?  Also no.  Does all that mean that I'm ok with what life threw at me?  Again, no.  It just means that God, even in the hardest and dark moments of our life, it still writing the story.  Read that again and cling to it.  It's hard to see what's in front of you when there is thick fog, and grief fogs our sight.  Just because you can't see what's in front of you doesn't mean that there isn't something good still there.  Like all things it might take awhile to get there and see it, but trust that it is.

      The no of God lays waste to the feel good Christian faith of our time.  A faith that is a mile wide and an inch deep.  It ruins that idea that God is some kind of magial genie who we simply rub the bottle and He gives us our wish.  It lays waste to vending machine prayers.  What's a vending machine prayer?  Picture a vending machine. We put money in it and we make our selection, and out it comes.  If the machine doesn't give us what we want we have a fit, shake the machine, and yell at it.  Vending machine prayers are simply this, we pray to God, make our selection of the outcome, and wait for God to give it to us.  That isn't a Biblical prayer at all.  It's a biased prayer built on our own selfishlessnes and limited understanding.  That prayer depends on us and doesn't demand trusting in God.  That is a prayer built on self, not a Savior.  The no removes the 'veneer' from our faith, it removes the feel good, happily ever after story, and brings us to a stark reality that God, even in the no, is still good and somehow, someway, going to do something good out of it.

      Sometimes God answers no.  Maybe you are living in the no of God right now.  First, let me tell you that I'm sorry that you are there.  If you heard no then you are probably hurting, scared, reeling, confused, doubting, depressed, shaken, broken, and a carousel of other revolving emotions.  I'm sorry that you are here, but you aren't here by accident.  I encourage you to feel what you feel....but unburden youself to God.  Be honest.  Be gritty.  He's God, He's big enough to hear what you have to say.  He already knows it anyhow.  Cast your cares on Him, and maybe that care is simply a life that you dreamed that has fallen apart.  But let me share with you something that you might not want to hear in the moment, maybe not right now, but I want you to be gently reminded of it.  The no of God doesn't cancel His goodness, His faithfulness, nor His grace.  It will probably make you question those and other attributes of His, and I promise you that you will come away with a better understanding about the nature of God.  But the voice of God's no doesn't mean that He has failed you or that He doesn't care.  He does care.  It also doesn't mean that He's far away or aloof or unaware.  Psalm 34:18, the Lord is near to the brokenhearted and save those who are crushed in spirit.  If you heart God say no, then I imagine your heart is broken and your soul crushed.  In that moment run to Him.  Don't allow the no to cause a separation between you and God.  Flee from the anxiety and fear that the no can cause, and instead run to a Father in heaven.  Yes, sometimes God answers no.  But that no can lead you to know Him more deeply and to lean on Him with all your understanding.  That no will help you to see Him more clearly.  His no isn't the only thing or the last thing that He's telling you.  Keep listening, keep trusting, and keep following Him.