I woke up recently, overwhelmed with grief. My first thoughts were the losses from this past year, the pains experienced, and the prayers still unanswered. I don’t know about you, but 2021 has been one of the hardest years of my life, and the weight of this year pulls heavy on my heart and soul.

I tried to shake myself from the heaviness. A long time ago, a Sunday school teacher had taught me to counter discouragement with practices of gratitude. For every discouraging thought, I was to recall and thank God for something good in my life. So, as I slowly got up, my mind began creating a list of the good things in my life — my family, my friends, my health. But with each good thing I recalled, my next thought turned again to loss and grief. Pain has a way of clouding out the good, doesn’t it?

Within minutes, I could feel the tears welling up in my eyes. “How long, O God? How long must I bear this grief? When is healing coming?” I whispered.

I even felt angry that I had gone through some of the things I had experienced. I didn’t ask for these struggles. I didn’t want to be living through a pandemic. I didn’t want certain relationships to be severed. None of it felt fair. I didn’t want to have these weights in my life.

Grief is hard to bear.

By God’s grace, I was listening to a song later that morning called, “You Are God and You Are Good.” The words washed over me and were a balm to my soul:

For those who mourn today be the comfort
And who hunger after You be satisfied
For You bless the poor in spirit for Heaven is their Kingdom
We know that You are God, and You are good
Yes we know that You are God, and You are good.

You see, our circumstances may not be good, but God is good in the midst of our circumstances. God knows our pains. He sees us. In our pain, we can feel so alone, unwanted, unworthy, but God promises that nothing can separate us from His love. I love the New Living Translation of Romans 8:38-39:

And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow — not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. No power in the sky above or in the earth below — indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.

These truths from Scripture declare that neither miscarriage nor infertility, neither mental health struggles nor debt, neither estranged relationship nor pains in our family, or abuse of any kind can separate us from the love of Christ Jesus. God doesn’t always spare us from pain, but He never abandons us in the midst of our pain.

In his commentary on Psalm 46, Charles Spurgeon wrote that God is good — not because He causes things that seem or feel “good” to happen in our lives, but because in the midst of the storm, God comes closer to us than the storm could ever be. This is why we can say God is good no matter how bad the storm is, no matter how much pain we experience, no matter how different the outcome is from what we’ve prayed for. In the hardest moments of life, God comes close to us. He doesn’t change. He doesn’t falter. He doesn’t quit. He doesn’t leave, and He doesn’t let go.

God is our good Father. He cares about our everyday lives — past, present, and future. He loves us, and He desires to give us good gifts. But He also doesn’t owe us anything. We can trust that because God is good, He knows what is best for our life. In the darkest moments of our lives, we can come to God in prayer, lay our pains before Him and declare, “You are God, and You are good.”

Sister, we’re gonna make it because our God is good.

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