I’m living a life full of experiences that have left me on my knees asking why, crying for answers, just wanting to understand.

Answers don’t always come in pretty packages.  Sometimes there are no answers.   Every once in a while, they come just as you expected them to look.  More often for me, they are not at all what I thought, but exactly what I need.  They sometimes bring more questions.

When I was a little girl and I wanted to be loved and safe. I didn’t think my prayers were heard.  I never imagined He needed me endure so that some day I would be strong enough.

As a young woman, I wanted to be independent, do things all on my own because I didn’t know how to trust anyone else.  My answer was not an independent life.  My answer was a love that would teach me to trust.  God gave me a man to love and to be loved by, to laugh with, to cry with, and to share all of life’s ups and downs with.

After too few years of living without Duchenne, it entered my life with a big bang and turned it upside down.  

I thought I had already lived the hard part of my life. I thought I knew about pain and I wouldn’t have to hurt anymore.  I really thought I was living my happily every after.

I never expected something worse.  The pain that came when my boys were diagnosed was unlike any I had every known.  I understood then, the unanswered prayers of my past was God preparing me for my new present.

In the midst of the pain Duchenne brought to my life I prayed for healing, my answer came in a way that I had never intended. My boys were not healed.  They still have Duchenne.  My broken heart was healed though; with the gift of a beautiful baby girl.

I have joy and happiness, but I’m not living my happily ever after.  I’ve learned that it is something I may never experience in this life.  It will truly be in my after.

There is profound loss.  I’m convinced that as long as I walk my earthly journey, I will never know why.  Instead, I am left to find a way to live without and wait for a day I understand.  Perhaps then, that is my answer…wait.

Answers are sometimes full of pain. Why is someone sick, why is someone weak, why are they getting worse? For years, I have been searching for an answer to a question similar to those that is finally starting to surface.  I’ve sat and cried and let it break me a little.  I don’t know what I was expecting or how I thought it would come wrapped.  But what I got felt like being clothes-lined with barbed wire.  It hurts.

Sometimes we wish we never asked, but once you do you can’t give the answer back.

I am learning that answers are gifts.  These gifts are not always painless, they are not always what we expect, sometimes they create more and sometimes they take away. 

They allow us to know what we are dealing with though. They help us plan our next steps.  They give us understanding.  And eventually, even those that go unanswered, have the ability to give us peace.  The real challenge for me is to accept the gift, even if I would rather return it.  And I must work to remember to trust the teacher and His answers, even when it hurts.