Little Wren Writes

There is a phrase people sometimes say when something terrible happens:

“Everything happens for a reason.”

When someone says this to me, I have become quite skilled at smiling politely. Sometimes I nod. Occasionally I even manage a thoughtful little “hmm.”

Internally, however, I am groaning.

Because I don’t know that I believe everything happens for a reason. At least not in the way we often mean it.

Sometimes people make terrible choices. Sometimes bodies fail. Sometimes relationships break. Sometimes people hurt other people. Sometimes we live with the consequences of our own sin and sometimes we live with the consequences of someone else’s. Sometimes we experience the ordinary brokenness of living in a world that is not yet what God promises it will one day be.

And I don’t think I need to find a neat little reason for every painful thing that happens. Some things are simply deeply, terribly unwanted.

I’ve got a few of those. More than a few, actually.

Things I would never have chosen. Experiences I would gladly remove from my story. Pain I would happily have learned about theoretically rather than experientially.

I didn’t need firsthand experience. I would have been perfectly happy with the textbook.

There are things that happened when I was a child that should never happen to a child. There are people I’ve loved and lost. There are relationships I thought would be lifelong that weren’t. There are dreams I once assumed would simply be part of my future that I now have to hold very differently. There are experiences that have left marks on the way I think, feel, relate and respond to the world.

I don’t call those things good. And I don’t think God asks me to.

And yet tattooed on my wrist is four words I love:

His glory, my good

They’ve become something of an anchor for me. A reminder that this is what I want my life to be about. God’s glory. My good. They’re rooted in this enormous biblical conviction that God is at work in His people, conforming us to Christ, accomplishing His purposes, bringing redemption even from places of brokenness.

I believe that. I really do.

But if I’m honest, there are days when it’s become a thorn in my side. I look at those words and think to myself…really? Because sometimes it doesn’t feel good. In fact only a few weeks ago I found myself despising it. Not because I didn’t *know* it was true but because sometimes I cannot see how this could possibly be for my good. And sometimes I certainly can’t see how something painful or ugly could bring glory to God.

There are moments when those words on my wrist feels less like a confident declaration and more like a question.

His glory?
My good?
Here too, God?

Great.

Maybe that’s part of faith; not only believing something when I can trace exactly how it works but holding onto what I know about God while still saying: I don’t understand how this fits.

Romans 8:28 is one of those verses that can either be an enormous comfort or be wielded rather badly:

“In all things God works for the good of those who love him…”

It doesn’t say all things are good. That’s an important distinction. All things are not good. Abuse isn’t good. Death isn’t good. Betrayal isn’t good. Sin isn’t good. Suffering isn’t automatically good simply because God is sovereign over it.

The claim is much more extraordinary than that.

God can work in all things for good.

Even there. Even in things He hates. Even in things that should never have happened. Even in things I still wish hadn’t. God is somehow capable of taking what is unwanted and doing something unexpected with it.

I’ve started seeing glimpses of that in my own life. And some of them have caught me completely by surprise.

Sometimes a woman will come and talk to me about her marriage. Things are falling apart. She’s frightened. She’s grieving. She doesn’t know what her future will look like.

And I know something about that now. Not because I studied it. Because I’ve sat on the floor in the wreckage of it myself.

I know that particular grief. I know the strange loss of not only a relationship but an identity, a future, a set of assumptions about how your life would unfold. I know there aren’t always words that make it better. So sometimes I don’t need to find them.

I can simply sit beside her.

Sometimes it’s a woman whose life hasn’t included children in the way she hoped. There is a particular kind of grief there that can be difficult to explain. Especially when you’re genuinely delighted for other people’s babies. When you love children. When you celebrate your friends. When you’re not bitter. And still, something aches.

I know something about holding that tension too. And suddenly something I never wanted to understand becomes a language I can speak with someone else. Not perfectly. Not because our stories are identical.

But enough to say: I see why this hurts – and mean it.

Sometimes it’s a teenager. A messy home. Fear. Conflict. Things happening behind closed doors that nobody else can see. And suddenly the little girl I once was is not merely part of a painful history I wish I could rewrite. Her story gives me ears to hear what another young person is struggling to say. As a child who experienced domestic violence, I know something about what it feels like when home isn’t uncomplicatedly safe. I know the strange reality of being a child in situations far too big for you. I know that kids notice more than adults sometimes realise. I know that fear can become normal.

And now, years later, I can sit beside a teenager and not be frightened by their story. I can listen. I can believe them. I can help them find safe adults and appropriate support. I can remind them that what is happening around them is not their fault to fix.

Would I choose what happened to me in order to gain that ability? No. Absolutely not.

But has God used it? Yes. He already has. I’ve seen it over 15 years in pastoral ministry to young people.

As a daughter who knows grief, I can sit with people grieving parents. As someone who has watched a marriage end, I can sit with someone staring at the same terrifying possibility. As someone whose imagined future has changed, I can understand something of the grief of someone else’s changed future. As someone who knows anxiety from the inside, I don’t need to be frightened when another person tells me their thoughts aren’t behaving particularly well today.

And increasingly I’ve found myself thinking: God, You really are using this.

Not someday. Now.

Things I thought were simply scars are becoming places from which I can love.

That’s unexpected.

There is a danger here, though, because I don’t want to turn suffering into a qualification.

I don’t want to tell myself (or you!) that we are ‘more useful now’.

I especially don’t want to believe I had to be hurt so God could make me useful to hurting people.

God is not short on resources. He did not need my suffering.

Another danger is that sometimes another person’s story is simply too close to mine and I have to let go of carrying it.

I’ve had to learn that, rather quickly at times. Just because I understand someone’s pain doesn’t mean I am always the right person to carry it with them. Sometimes the most loving thing I can say is:

“I understand enough to know this matters, but I’m not the right person to help you with it right now. Let me connect you with someone who can.”

That is still care.

There are seasons where someone else’s marriage crisis might press directly against my own grief. There are stories that activate things I’m still healing from. There are moments when I have compassion but not capacity.

And I think I’m slowly learning that God’s glory does not require my self-destruction. I don’t have to prove that my suffering has been redeemed by immediately turning around and becoming everybody else’s support person.

Jesus can use my story without requiring me to bleed from it continually. That’s an important distinction for me. Sometimes God uses what I’ve experienced by allowing me to sit beside someone. Sometimes He uses it by helping me recognise ‘This person needs more support than I can give’.

And then I help them find it.

Both can be love.

Someone said something helpful to me recently that I’ve been continuing to reflect on.
Because I choose to be quite open and vulnerable about my life, I need to expect that sometimes other people will respond with vulnerability too.

I share something…and it becomes an invitation.

Someone reads words I’ve written about grief and thinks:
Maybe she’ll understand mine.

Someone hears me talk honestly about struggling and thinks:
Maybe I can tell her I’m struggling too.

Someone hears part of my story and thinks:
Maybe I’m not the only one.

That carries responsibility. It requires boundaries and wisdom. I am not everybody’s counsellor. I cannot hold every story I’m offered. Sometimes I need to point people towards someone better equipped to help.

But I also don’t want to miss how extraordinary it is. Something I wrote because I was trying to make sense of my own life can become a doorway through which someone else says:
Me too.

Maybe that is one of the unexpected ways God uses vulnerability.

Paul writes in 2 Corinthians about the: “God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.”

I’ve always liked that passage. I think I understand it more clearly now. God comforts us and then somehow the comfort doesn’t stop with us. It travels. Not necessarily because we have answers – often we don’t – but because we know something about sitting in the dark. We know something about needing people to stay. We know which clichés were spectacularly unhelpful. We know that sometimes “I don’t know what to say, but I’m here” is far more comforting than an explanation. We know what comfort felt like when we needed it. And we can offer some of it onwards.

Maybe God’s comfort is meant to have a long life.

And this is where His glory, my good has begun to mean something deeper to me. Because maybe my good isn’t always what I initially imagined.
My good is not: Nothing painful ever happens to me.

Clearly.

Nor is God’s glory found in pretending suffering doesn’t matter. God isn’t glorified by domestic violence. God isn’t glorified by betrayal. God isn’t glorified by death.

But God is glorified when the things that were meant to destroy are not allowed the final word. When suffering produces compassion instead of cruelty. When someone who has been hurt becomes safe for hurting people. When grief teaches us how to sit beside grief. When shame is brought into the light. When someone discovers they’re not alone. When the comfort God gave me somehow reaches another person through me. When the places I once thought made me damaged become places where someone else encounters gentleness.

That glorifies God.

And strangely, unexpectedly…I think it has also been good for me. Not because I would choose the suffering again. I wouldn’t.

But because there is something healing about discovering that my pain doesn’t only take. Sometimes, in God’s hands, it can give. It has deepened compassion. Changed the way I listen. Made me slower to assume I know somebody’s story. Made me more comfortable with tears. Made me less frightened of messy conversations. Made me understand that sometimes there simply isn’t a sentence that fixes something.

And perhaps most importantly, it has shown me God in places I never wanted to have to find Him. There is good there. Not because the suffering was good.

But because God is.

Of course, there are still parts of my story where I cannot see any of this. That’s important to say.

There are still things where ‘His glory, my good’ feels much more like faith than observation.

I cannot point to every wound and tell you what God has done with it. Some things still just hurt. Some questions remain questions. Some things I am far too close to understand. And I don’t want to force meaning onto them simply because ambiguity makes me uncomfortable.

Maybe one day I’ll see something I can’t see now. Maybe I won’t this side of eternity. Faith doesn’t require me to manufacture a lesson.

But I have enough evidence now to wonder. That’s what’s changed. I can look backwards and see places where God has already done something I never expected. He has taken experiences I would gladly erase and somehow brought compassion through them. He has taken words I’ve written while trying to understand my own pain and used them to help someone else name theirs. He has allowed parts of my story I once wanted to hide to become the very reason another person felt safe enough to tell the truth.

That’s not nothing. That’s redemption beginning to peek through.

So no. I’m still probably going to smile awkwardly when someone tells me “Everything happens for a reason.”

I can’t quite get there. But I can say something else.

Nothing is beyond the redeeming work of God.

That’s different.

I don’t need to call evil good. I don’t need to be thankful for everything that has happened. I don’t need to find a purpose for every pain. I don’t need to pretend I wouldn’t change things if I could.

But I can look at the unwanted parts of my story and say:

God, these are Yours too.

Use what You will. Heal what still hurts. Help me know when to speak and when to be quiet. When to sit beside someone and when to find someone else who can. Don’t let suffering make me believe it has only ever taken from me.

And somehow – for Your glory, for the good of others, and yes, somehow even for mine – redeem what I never wanted.

Maybe that is the unexpected gift. Not that I eventually discover everything happened for a reason. But that I discover God can work even here.

Even with this. Even through me.

And when I look down at those four words on my wrists – His glory, my good – I don’t always read them as something I’ve figured out.

Some days they’re a declaration. Some days they’re a hope. Some days they’re a question. And some days they’re simply a prayer:

God, I can’t see it yet.
But I know what You have already done with the unwanted parts of my story.
So I trust that You are not finished.

“The God of all comfort… comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.” 
2 Corinthians 1:3–4