It Is What It Is

The words mysteriously appeared on the gravestone which marked the near extinction of our family’s hope.  

“It is what it is.”

A few short months before, the hands that had recently carried our sister to her grave took up the spade to turn the same earth onto her husband’s coffin. Numbly, those same hands clenched in desperate prayer grasping for answers that never came. 

And then, as if in a delivery delayed by a winter’s storm, the words my brother in law had chosen to leave us with arrived.  

“It is what it is.”

After the shock wore off, we laughed in disbelief. Of all the wisdom he could bequeath to generations to come, he had chosen this. Time passed and grief settled in hard but that simple statement became the softer landing pad for all questions that were thrown up to Heaven only to come back empty.

And what can be said about a mother mourning her young son? A friend grieving her vibrant health? A husband who fought the battle for his marriage and lost? Years ago, I could barely hear my Daddy’s whisper through my own cries of despair as he read God’s answer just outside the room where my mom lay dying: 

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts neither are your ways my ways.” declares the Lord.

Isaiah 55:8 (NIV)

As believers, how do we wrap our heads and hearts around unfair heartbreaks in this fragmented world? We want answers. We want to know why. But if an angel showed up at your earthly doorstep with the eternal explanation, would it ever be enough? 

So we walk by faith and not by sight, trusting in the love and goodness of our Heavenly Father Who answered the greater question of His love for us in His Own Son’s blood.  

“For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.” John 3:16 (NIV)

We take the hands that once came away empty and lift them again to Heaven expecting comfort and strength, but not answers. Not yet.  

We know that one day all will be made right. One day. But not today.

So we wait and we trust and we live and we sigh.

“It is what it is”