I grew up attending Sunday School every week, soaking in stories about Adam and Eve, Jonah and the Whale, and David and Goliath. I memorized Bible verses for fun, I went to youth group multiple times a week, and I thought I had it all figured out. My world was black and white, right and wrong, nice and easy.

I always wrestled with doubts about Christianity, though: wondering about the validity of the Bible, questioning how unfair it was that people who never heard about Jesus were just destined for a fiery afterlife, second-guessing my faith. Once I left home, my world-view expanded and I let the doubts swallow me whole. I left the former black and white behind and slid into a murky gray, where I didn’t know anything about anything and I just kind of sat there for a really long time. Through it all, I still went to church every week, still attended Bible study and still felt in my heart that I was chasing the light, even if it was just a tiny pin-prick of it.

I started to see God in new ways: in the astounding beauty of nature, in the eyes of my children, in the power of the wind that He made. I let myself be OK with the mystery of the unknown, certain that He was the creator of this huge, crazy world, but I didn’t feel a deep sense of connection with Him. I longed for it, but mostly I just stayed busy with life and the days rolled into years that passed by so quickly.

Then last summer, I felt a lump on my four year-old daughter’s neck. It was big. And scary. And I was brought to my knees, both literally and figuratively. My first response was a plea for help from God. “Please let her be OK. Don’t let it be cancer. Take it away, take it away, take it away.” I spent sleepless nights, envisioning her in a hospital bed, her head bald from chemo, tubes sticking out of her everywhere and I just couldn’t handle it. I prayed and I prayed but the lump remained, and it had the doctors stumped. Thus began my summer of the biggest crisis of faith I had ever endured.

A wise, dear woman I have come to know in the past few years has played a key role in my (at times, very stunted) spiritual growth and a while back, she shed new light on the age-old story of Adam and Eve and it stuck with me. She said that when they were tempted to eat the fruit, the real questions they were wrestling with were, “Is God really good? And can we trust Him?”

Is God REALLY good? Look at this broken down world! The 30 year-old moms dying of breast cancer, the tsunamis, the depravity. How can He really be good?! And if, through all of that, He somehow proves Himself to be good, can I actually trust Him with my life? The lives of my kids?!

I spent weeks in that space, fighting, holding my breath, unable to imagine that He was actually going to be good for me. I held on tight to the situation in my heart with a closed fist, unable to imagine releasing control. If I gave Him permission to actually do His will, what would that mean? Would my daughter die?

Then, something shifted in me. A peace came. Slowly, it trickled in. And there was a song that helped me get there, one that I listened to on repeat as I drove in my car alone and cried.

A simple song that essentially says “Jesus Loves Me”.

I gradually opened my hands and my heart, surrendered this life to the One who made it, and rested in the fact that He loves us. That His will is best, even when it might be different than mine, even when there’s no way I’ll ever understand it. Through the months of doctor’s appointments, consultations with oncology at Children’s Hospital, ultrasounds and chest x-rays, He was good. And I could trust Him.

A year later, I find myself tucking my daughter in at night, so thankful that she is healthy and that the story had the ending I had hoped for. But also knowing that this life is not our own, that peace is not conditional on a positive outcome.

He loves us.