Treasures of Darkness: Loss, Trauma, and God’s Promise to Restore

“I will give you the treasures of darkness and hidden riches of secret places, that you may know that I, the LORD, who call you by your name, am the God of Israel.” Isaiah 45:3 NKJV

I was about 13 when a stray cat made her appearance in our neighborhood. Nothing about her was particularly attractive. And yet, my family’s hearts stirred with compassion when she kept returning to our doorstep. My mum decided to invite her into our home with fresh fish, which she devoured gratefully. 

The cat gladly took her place in our family and even gifted us little kittens not long later, whom we gave away to grateful friends. However, my mum’s joy quickly dissipated when our cat began to pee on our floors after she had had her kittens.

Longing for Comfort in our Unprocessed Losses

At the time, my parents were navigating new terrain in parenting their newly adopted youngest child, managing the demands of a quickly growing Christian ministry, and facing my dad’s recent cancer diagnosis. I don’t remember us stopping to unstack or process our huge cross-continental move together. 

What I remember most from this time was coming home from school to an empty house and finding my cat waiting for me, ready to curl up on my lap. I was in my first few years at a new-for-me high school. As a returning missionary kid who had been through multiple moves, I was struggling to fit in. I had not yet come to know and trust the strong, safe arms of Jesus to hold me and carry me through the troubles of this world.

Sometimes We Use Comfort as a Numbing Mechanism

In all the turmoil, my cat felt like the one gift of comfort reserved just for me. She took the edge off my pain. It felt like she alone understood my overburdened teenage heart. 

Now, as I look back as an adult, I can see how I began to deem the abuse and aggression I was witnessing in my home at that time as a reflection of God’s heart. Watching those who had not just modeled, but also introduced me to the love of God, exhibit abusive behavior and even deem that abuse as godly, filled me with doubts. What if I didn’t really know my God after all? What if He wasn’t good after all?

Shortly after the abuse started, I thumbed through the pages of the Psalms, tears streaming, telling the questions and doubts rising in me to be silent. I trusted God’s love to meet me in my pain, but not in my doubts. Yet, as time progressed and nothing appeared to be changing in my home, I began to hide my pain from Him too.

Doubts are Welcome in God’s Presence

Later, by His grace, I would come to understand that not only our tears, but also our doubts, are welcome in His presence. You see, all along, that lingering doubt, “What if I didn’t really know my God after all?” was, in fact, God’s invitation to me to come to know Him and His goodness for me in new ways. An invitation I am now slowly, by His loving and patient discipline, learning to step into.

At the time, though, without realizing what I was doing, I began to use my cat as a way to put a lid on the doubts that were now not just whispering but screaming at me. With my cat on my knee, I drew on her comfort, ironically deeming God’s comfort – in actuality, present through her – to have abandoned me.

Then, one day, my comfort was taken from me – or so I thought. One of my sisters began having an allergic, asthmatic response to our cat’s presence. So my Mum took our cat to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA), knowing that they would most likely be putting her down shortly after. I couldn’t stop crying. 

In that one moment, it was like all the pent-up and unprocessed grief of a lifetime came flooding out, without me realizing I had Someone to hold me in it. 

That day, not just my cat died. In many ways, I did too. 

I curled up in bitterness and unforgiveness. I detached, closing my eyes to my ever-present God and His countless gifts. But, praise God, my falling would only reveal Christ’s outstretched hand of mercy beneath me. 

Praise God, He is the Great Redeemer!

Recently, I experienced the full-circle redemption of that embittered childhood loss when my own kids faced possibly losing our second cat. Our first had been run over before his first birthday. 

My youngest asked me, “If God was truly with our cat (the truth I reminded her of), why wasn’t He bringing him home?” As we cried together, and I hugged her tightly, I found myself saying: “Whatever happens, we can know this: God is love. That is His nature and His character. That is who He is. So, I pray that He gives us eyes to see His goodness.” 

I truly meant what I said. Until anxious thoughts began attacking me: 

What if our cat never came home? On a much more serious note, what if the mom of my daughters’ best friend ended up dying from the terminal cancer she was walking through? What if my daughter, like I did as a little girl, stopped trusting God’s heart toward her? 

And what if I stopped trusting again too?

God Heals Us Through the Renewal of Our Minds in the Holy Spirit’s Counseling

God saw my need for that last portion of my prayer: the prayer for eyes to see His goodness. 

In my weakness and need, He planted a picture in my mind that helped me to unburden my heart. A vision of a hammer smashing a heart into smithereens. It’s that picture that led me to turn toward Him and acknowledge my need. “Yes, that’s exactly what my heart looks and feels like right now,” I told Him.

God saw, before I even realized this myself, that I had begun to question His character in the multiple anxious thoughts assailing me. But in His sweet prompting, He empowered me to trust Him and to come to Him for reassurance. It was then I saw a new picture unfolding. 

Suddenly, rich golden oil flowed into that smashed-to-smithereens heart, binding it together as one. It reminded me that God refers to His Word – His sure and steadfast promises to us – as gold refined by fire. In His sweet reminder, I began not only to see but to feel and taste the surety of His love. 

Only a few minutes had passed since those anxious thoughts attacked me after praying. But that’s all the time it took for God to defend His character. He cast out all fear and unbelief in the light of His love for me and my family. 

Our circumstances hadn’t changed, but my thoughts and feelings about those circumstances had. God had quieted my soul by reminding me that when I gave my life to Him, I hadn’t placed my faith in my own or others’ ability to push me to trust Him through loss, grief, and pain. I had placed my trust in His ability to persuade me to trust Him, moment by moment. Yes:

“The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.” Psalm 34:18 NIV  

God Invites Us to Receive Hidden Treasure in the Darkness

Is there pain in your past (and present) that God wants to redeem for you also? 

Are there lingering doubts hiding away in your heart that you too need Him to lay bare for you? Are you, like me, in need of God’s loving reassurance? 

Know that you are not alone in your weakness and need. Jesus understands you, and He understands me, right where we are. 

“For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.” Hebrews 4:15 ESV

And that High Priest invites us to “then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need” (Heb. 4:16 ESV). Praise God, we don’t have to be “strong for God” because, through the cross, Christ has become our strength and our salvation. And that Savior of ours has promised hidden treasure to us. 

Through the dark recesses of our doubts and unbelief, God is extending a beautiful invitation to us to come to know Him in new ways. And He who has promised us such riches is faithful. For not one word of our God has ever, nor will ever, return void.

“I will give you the treasures of darkness And hidden riches of secret places, That you may know that I, the LORD, Who call you by your name, Am the God of Israel.” Isaiah 45:3 NKJV

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