This part of January is challenging to me. In many ways, it always has been; it’s a busy time, getting ready for the new semester to start. We’re coming out of the holiday season. There are multiple family birthdays, which bring joy but also additional tasks, though at least I no longer have to figure out how to do birthday parties for a child born in January.

The hardest part of this week is in some ways also the easiest. It consists of writing two short notes, one a message on Facebook, the other a text. The messages are similar and consist of not much more than “I’m thinking of and praying for you today.” One is to my older son, the other to a woman I’ve never actually met.

Nine years ago, my husband and I were sleeping in on Saturday morning when the phone rang. It was our older son who had returned to college a few days before, and he sounded strange, breathing heavily and struggling to speak. As a mother, of course, I immediately pictured him injured in the hospital and began questioning him, trying to figure out what was going on. He eventually managed to convey that he was not hurt, so I began questioning him about his girlfriend (now wife), and he finally managed to say, “It’s Mark,” eventually followed by, “He’s gone.”

Mark was that instant lifelong friend that many people seem to make in college. They met the first day of orientation and were nearly inseparable for the next three and a half years until news of the fatal car accident came. 

What do you do when your son suffers such a blow? To this day, I don’t think I really know the answer to that beyond simply being there. Within the hour, we had hotel reservations and were on the road. We shopped for his first adult suit, met his future mother-in-law for the first time since she had come to support her daughter, took a group of Mark’s friends out for dinner. Our presence was appreciated, but it couldn’t stop the pain, of course, and then we had to go home, back to our jobs and comforts while our hearts bled for our child.

This was a life-changing event, in the short term as it impacted health and school, but also in the longer term. It impacted life goals and helped dictate our son’s current job. It affected the wedding, where there were no attendants because the person who was supposed to be best man couldn’t be there.

Healing has come with time, so much so that there are significant periods of time when Mark is forgotten and life is full of happiness and joy. But then there is this time of the year, as his birthday approaches, and we mark the anniversary of the death. And so I send a message to Mark’s mother and one to my son, to let them know that I, too, remember their loss on this day. A small thing, but all that I have to do that might help.

Then I question, as we are prone to do. Why, God, would you take this young man? Why would you allow my son to suffer such a loss? 

I have no answers for those questions beyond the general brokenness of the world and the free will that God has given people. After all, I don’t believe that God caused the accident, only that he did not act supernaturally to prevent it.

In my questioning, however, I often find myself reminded of the suffering Jesus went through and the suffering God the Father subjected himself to in causing the Son to suffer so. You see, having heard and sung of the blood of Jesus and Christ’s death and suffering all my life, I sometimes see that pain as not real. It becomes something that I know about, but don’t quite recognize for what it is. After all, God is God. He is supremely powerful and completely self-sufficient.

But, think about this: God is God, but he allowed himself in Jesus to be subjected to horrific pain.

• Jesus was betrayed by one of his twelve closest followers, someone who was supposed to be his friend. “While he was still speaking, there came a crowd, and the man called Judas, one of the twelve, was leading them. He drew near to Jesus to kiss him, but Jesus said to him, ‘Judas, would you betray the Son of Man with a kiss?’” (Luke 22:47-48 ESV).
• Jesus was mocked and scorned. “Then they spit in his face and struck him. And some slapped him, saying, ‘Prophesy to us, you Christ! Who is it that struck you?’” (Matthew 26:67-68 ESV). In addition, there is the crown of thorns, both painful and mocking. He’s spit upon again and even derided while on the cross.
• Jesus was beaten multiple times. We see him being beaten before he is taken to Pilate. The Bible states that Pilate had him scourged before delivering him to be crucified. Then we have a description of yet another beating as part of preparation for the crucifixion.
• Jesus died a physically agonizing death. Crucifixion was a weapon Rome used to keep subjugated peoples in line, and it was designed for cruelty and visibility.

All of this is just the part we can relate to. Jesus was also suffering from the weight of our sin: “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21 ESV). That is a kind of suffering that we really don’t understand, though anyone who has struggled to be free of an addiction or some sinful habit that they just couldn’t shake may have an inkling of what Christ was going through.

Furthermore, as a parent whose children have suffered, I know that God the Father also suffered as he put Jesus through this ordeal for our sake. 

I don’t understand; this side of heaven, I probably won’t ever understand why the really awful things happen. Yet, I will hold on to the insight they give me into the suffering that the all-powerful, completely self-sufficient creator of the universe chose to go through so that we might be reconciled to him.

Surely he has borne our griefs
    and carried our sorrows;
yet we esteemed him stricken,
    smitten by God, and afflicted.
But he was pierced for our transgressions;
    he was crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,
    and with his wounds we are healed.
                            Isaiah 53:4-5 ESV