Happy Mother's day for all mothers out there!If this is your first mother's day without your mother, may God bless you today and help you remember and honor your mom. However, some mothers have actually lost a child. Maybe you're in your 60's and your 32 year-old died in a car accident last month, or maybe your six year-old died last week from cancer. If the latter is the case (even if it was not so recent), read on!
https://www.insideedition.com/headlines/24023-3-year-olds-anguish-on-display-in-heartbreaking-photos-to-show-the-reality-of-childhood
I am a teenager and I've never had cancer or any diease so I cannot imagine how a patient with cancer feels, especially as a child! This applies to any diease! I also cannot imagine what a parent feels! I wish I could remember the source, but once I read, "A child whose parents die is an orphan. A woman whose husband dies is a widow. A man whose wife has died is a widower. There is no word for a parent who loses a child because it just does not make sense." This is very true. Just writing this entry breaks my heart! This may make you wonder why God lets children suffer.
No one knows this answer except God Himself. However, it began at the fall of Adam and Eve when they ate the forbidden fruit and sin became a thing. Suffering can be a consequence of something. For instance, if a little child touches a hot stove after his mother told him not to, he burns his hand. Unfortunately, a burnt hand is a consequence. (Not that he deserves a trip to the ER).
The question remains, "Why do innocent people suffer?" This is not to say suffering is a good thing, but why it happens. He wants us to learn life lessons when we suffer. For instance, some childhood cancer survivors go on to spread awareness of childhood cancer. I know Sophia Gall, a girl who passed away from cancer last year at the age of 16, told us she did not know childhood cancer was a thing prior to her diagnosis. (It was a video of where her YouTube channel hit 100,000 subscribers in 2017.) Cancer is not a good thing, but her bringing awareness to it was. Of course, cancer is not where suffering ends.
If a high schooler had to choose between becoming a lawyer after attending Harvard, you would suggest to them to spend much of their time studying and doing activities so their application would stand out. Harvard rejects more than 90% of their applicants, so you really need to have a competitive edge to go to Harvard. Not only that, but all colleges, especially Ivy League colleges, are quite expensive! Would you tell them, at age 16 and as a sophomore year of high school, to go ahead and become a lawyer, to go ahead and apply to Harvard, or to spend a lot of their time studying, doing multiple extra ciriculars, and working to start making money to go to school? Probably the latter, right? That would mean causing a lot of stress in the short-term and often being tempted to give up! Although, if the teen really wants to get into that school, such stress may pay off, because even if Harvard does not accept them, and even if they end up going to a school with a high acceptance rate, wouldn't they be more successful once they start college? Yes!
As an example related to cancer, Ellie Waters is an 18-year-old from the UK who had Rhabdomyosarcoma when she was 14. She had been planning to become a lawyer, but now she is 18 and wants to be a pediatric cancer researcher. She is suffering from several long-term side effects of chemotherapy, but she wants to work to find medicines to make more kids survive cancer and with fewer side effects. She would not have considered doing so if she had never had cancer.
(I know I suck at making transitions! Working on it!) In short, while no one knows exactly why God allows suffering, we can know it could be part of a plan for God to improve who we are and to make lemons out of lemonade!
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