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I asked Carol if she felt God’s love in those early days when they were still in shock.
Carol: Well, I was not feeling God’s love, I will promise you that. I felt like “Lord, I spent all these years serving you and loving you and wanting to further your Kingdom and the bottom has just dropped out of my life.” And underneath all that I knew nothing can touch us without God’s permission, and so it felt like he was being very unfair. I know many people have felt that God has not been fair with me that it’s hard, it’s a struggle to feel God’s love at that time and I began to question things. The enemy would come at me and say, “If you had read your Bible more consistently, you could have stopped this before it happened. If you had been less busy you could have figured out how to deal with this.” Lies from the enemy that are very debilitating. And for awhile all I could do was say, “Breathe, do the next thing.” And I realized that life was changing very drastically.
But in the middle of all that, God’s unfailing love came to us in the form of people who came alongside and prayed for us and helped us in tangible ways and they called themselves our “stretcher-bearers”–people who carried us when we could not carry ourselves.
Do you see what Carol is saying? God’s love came to her in the form of people. When you can’t feel God’s love because life has dealt you a blow so hard that your feelings are numb, that’s when you need Christian friends to be your “stretcher-bearers.” It’s really important to be a part of a community of Christians who will be there for you. And we all need to be that stretcher-bearer for those we know are going through some traumatic experience.