When the Worst Gets Worse
It was the day after my second round of chemo.
The “red devil,” they affectionately call it.
I felt awful. Still in my pajamas.
My older three had just been picked up by carpool.
I had my face down on the table.
“How am I going to do this?” I thought.
“Well… at least it can’t get any worse.”
I looked up at my six-month-old daughter sitting in her booster chair on the table—a new seat we had just gotten from Target the week before.
And then, before I could move, react, or respond—
I watched her jerk her chair. One, two, three times.
And off the side of the table she went.
Face down onto the kitchen floor.
Has life ever been so hard that you think,
Surely God is going to keep watch over anything else that could go wrong…
Just for a little while?
Like maybe you’re immune from further disaster for at least one day.
Because God doesn’t give us more than we can handle… right?
Because He has our back… yes?
Unfortunately, life doesn’t reliably work this way.
She took the fall face first.
I was sure her skull was broken. Her brain scrambled.
I grabbed her—panic-stricken—her cries colliding with mine as I held her against my chest.
“Why are You not protecting me, Lord?”
“And why are You not protecting my baby?”
I refused to let my husband take her from me.
I felt everything all at once—
fear of what I couldn’t control,
terror of what might be wrong,
shame that I hadn’t secured the chair better,
that I hadn’t been a more competent mother.
“I’m trying here, Lord. Don’t You see I’m trying?”
I don’t think I have ever felt so angry with God.
Yes, hard things happen.
Yes, I had just been blindsided by cancer.
But I was trying to accept it.
Trying to believe He was using it.
Trying to receive the cup I had been handed.
But my baby?
Already weaned early because of my diagnosis.
Already getting less of me because I was gone at appointments or running on empty.
And now this?
I was livid.
It pushed me over some kind of edge.
All the angry words came out.
All the tears. All the accusations.
“You are the God who is supposed to be looking out for me—
why have You left me exposed? Vulnerable? Failing at protecting the child You gave me?”
Why give me these children…
only to threaten it all?
I did not get any answers in that moment.
And the anger simmered for days.
I have no quick fixes or platitudes to offer here.
I remember sitting with my counselor, crying again over what felt like complete injustice.
Because the truth is—
sometimes things get really, really bad.
A pit.
A den of lions.
Chemo and an injured baby.
And in those moments, it doesn’t feel complicated.
It feels obvious.
God has abandoned us.
He took a nap.
He’s too busy with someone else’s problems.
Or worse… He just doesn’t care.
When we talk about God’s faithfulness, we usually mean getting what we want.
We want the acceptance letter.
The healthy baby.
The marriage that works.
We pray away sickness, loss, hardship.
But underneath all of that—especially in suffering—what we are actually longing for is this:
That God would respond.
That He would see us… and answer.
But how can He respond
if we never ask the real questions?
How can there be communion
if we turn away when things get hard?
I still don’t have easy answers.
But I know this:
It helped me to ask honestly.
To stop editing myself.
To hurl the raw questions straight at Him.
When the waters rise, we have a choice.
We can move away—
quietly collecting disappointments, building a case against Him.
Or we can turn toward Him.
Shouting our grief into the waves.
Giving Him the opportunity to meet us there.
Because suffering—whether cancer or infertility, discontentment or divorce—creates an unexpected opportunity:
To know Him in a way we never would have otherwise.
When everything else is stripped away…
when nothing is going your way…
Can we still choose Him?
And if we do—what kind of story does that write?
“Though He slay me, yet I will hope in Him.” — Job 13:15
“To trust God in the light is nothing—but trust Him in the dark, that is faith.”
“Suffering drives us to ask: Do we love God for Himself, or only for what He can do for us?”
— Tim Keller
And for all the moms wondering how my little person turned out—
She was okay.
The tears subsided.
A pediatrician friend walked me through everything and reassured me that frontal head injuries are often the least concerning.
She had a bruise. That’s all.
There is so much to be thankful for.
But here’s what still stretches me:
The hardest thing is believing that before the outcome comes.
Pause and Reflect
-When in your life have things seemed hard… and then gotten worse?
-When something difficult enters your life, do you tend to move toward God—or away from Him? What would it actually look like for you to turn toward Him—to bring your grief, your anger, and your unfiltered questions honestly before Him?
-Do you find yourself longing for God’s responsiveness? What might it look like for God to respond—not by changing your circumstances, but by meeting you in them? And how would you wrestle with that… if the answer you wanted never came?
-What are you afraid might happen if you are truly honest with God?