Where was God?

It’s a question we ask in moments of stress, trauma, and loss, when our lives fracture in ways we don’t yet understand. And if I’m honest, I didn’t ask this question in those moments because I believed God was there. I asked it because I thought He wasn’t.

I did not see God while it was happening. I see Him now, only looking back.

Where was God when a man abducted us, violently beat me, and raped her?

In that moment, I felt abandoned. There was no sense of meaning, no divine presence, only fear, survival, and my body doing whatever it had to do, to stay alive.

God showed up later.

He was in the instinct that made my body keep moving when my mind could not. He was in the invisible hands that lifted me off the ground and pushed me into the home of a woman brave enough to open her door and call the police. He was in my voice, shaking but steady enough to describe who he was and where he took her.

I didn’t recognize God in the days that followed either. I only saw exhaustion, rage, and confusion.

But He was there, in the coworkers who showed up without asking questions, in the nurse who held my hand when words failed, in the therapists who helped me untangle what happened from who I was. He was in friends who stayed long enough to learn how to be with the new version of me.

He was in the justice system that eventually put this man behind bars, ending decades of terror inflicted on strangers, people just like us.

And years later, He was there when I met this man face to face. When I finally had the chance to speak the words I was never able to say before. I didn’t feel powerful in that moment, but I felt a sense of freedom.

Where was God when I was diagnosed with cancer?

I didn’t feel lucky. I felt betrayed. I felt like my body had failed me, and I didn’t ask where God was, I assumed He had stepped away.

Only later did I feel Him.

He was in the job that brought me to Singapore, placing me in the care of extraordinary doctors who saved my life. He was in a school that paid for my surgeries and allowed me the time to heal. He was in the friend who crossed an ocean to sit beside me, and in the parents of my students who quietly delivered meals and groceries so I didn’t have to ask.

Where was God when I collapsed in an airport?

In that moment, I felt small alone and embarrassed. I didn’t feel God there either.

I feel Him now.

He was in the doctors who didn’t dismiss my symptoms. He was in the nurses who found the cyst and acted quickly. He was in the friends and family who stayed in the hospital with me, and in the ones who cared for me when I was too weak to fly home.

Where was God when my life fell apart and my dad died unexpectedly?

I thought God had failed me long before that. Two years earlier, I had been placed back in my parents’ home, and I was furious. I felt like I had failed at life. I blamed God for that season. I resented every minute of it.

Only after my dad passed did I understand.

God was in that unwanted pause. He was in the conversations I didn’t want to have, the ego I was forced to set aside, the healing that happened between my dad and I when I thought nothing was happening at all. Without that season, the one I fought, I would have carried regret I could never forgive myself for.

Where was God when my life in China fell apart?

How could He make it so easy to build a life, only to take it away? At the time, I saw loss, instability and another ending I didn’t choose. Another failure, and more regret to let go of.

I now know that I feel God in the town of Forest, where it quietly makes space for me, again. I feel Him in a life that is still unfolding, even though I don’t know where it’s heading. I feel Him in a church I never expected to attend and I feel Him in the hands typing these words, reminding me of who I am.

I didn’t recognize God in the moments themselves. I recognize Him in the reflection.

In the survival, in the people, in the pauses and in the way I’ve come to know myself well enough to make choices aligned with who I truly am. He was there all along, even when I couldn’t feel Him. Even when I didn’t want to believe he was there.

Looking back, I don’t see a life defined by what was taken from me. I see a life shaped by what carried me through. I didn’t recognize God in the chaos, the fear, or the grief, but I recognize Him now, in the clarity that followed. In the way I know myself more deeply. In the way I choose my life with intention instead of urgency. In the way I move forward aligned with who I am, not who I had to be to survive.

God wasn’t absent, He was present in pieces, in people, in pauses, waiting for me to be ready to see.