Photo by Kira Westland

By Dorcas Cheng-Tozun

Whenever I smell the scent of antiseptic, the sharp, cloying odor meant to clean and conceal, I think of my father. The three months he was in and out of the hospital. That last day, as I stroked his forehead and wept, never expecting to say good-bye to him just weeks before my fifteenth birthday.

I wondered where God was that day. I wondered why he hadn’t given us the miracle healing we asked for.

I smell my baby boy’s hair, that mysterious baby scent that encapsulates delight and contentment. I remember the three years of waiting, trying, hoping — and occasionally despairing — split almost exactly in the middle by the almost-baby who did not survive past eight weeks. This beautiful little one I now snuggle surprised us all with his conception and his early arrival at thirty-eight weeks.

When I hold him, I feel like I am holding a miracle. I see God in my son’s very existence.

I can still hear the chanting of dozens of Chinese schoolchildren, doing their morning calisthenics twenty-two stories below our Shenzhen flat. For months, their routine signaled to me that it was time to get up and go to work. And then, for months after that, their undeviating recitations reminded me that the world was moving on, even as I lay in bed, so mentally exhausted and broken that I could barely think, let alone work.

I wondered where God was in that season. I wondered why he hadn’t protected me from the mistreatment of others, the stress, the eventual burnout.

I woke each morning to the calls of marabou storks, house sparrows, and pied crows in our home in Nairobi. Moving overseas again, this time with a three-year-old in tow, was a huge act of faith for me. Anxiety attacks nearly overcame my resolve more than once. I struggled to figure out how life worked in this new country — but I also found striking beauty in the culture and sincere kindness in the people. My son adopted a Kenyan accent, made a dozen friends, and blossomed.

God kept showing up in that season. I stepped out in faithfulness, and he gave me overwhelming abundance — in work, in family, in my soul.

I see the horrific images on my screen of men, women, and children brutalized for their ethnicity or religion, or simply for being in the way of those who lust for power. Their horror, their devastation, their grief are etched into the lines of their faces, are pooled in their unblinking eyes. I read descriptions of the depths of evil and cruelty and hatred to which the human heart can plummet, and my heart aches.

I ask God to be there, to exercise his power and justice and mercy. I ask him to see their suffering, to hear their cries, to be the Savior they need. I have confidence that my prayers are heard — but I also have doubt.

I can still see the sheet of sunlight pouring through the window, the specks of dust sparkling like gems. I had been swallowed whole by grief at the loss of my father, and had yet to emerge even after my sixteenth birthday. I was convinced God had abandoned me, or worse, he was there but chose to do nothing. He had not saved my father; he was not saving me. My despair was more than I could shoulder.

Then God’s very presence filled that sunlit room and entered my closed-up heart. He assured me that he saw me, had heard me. He loved me more than I could know. He had been there all along and would always be there.

And in this promise, my faith resides. I do not pretend to know or understand how the world works. But I carry these experiences of Immanuel, of God with me, in my bones — through darkness and fear, through uncertainty and risk, through loss and suffering — and they never fail to point me to hope.

Dorcas Cheng-Tozun is an award-winning writer and the author of Start, Love, Repeat: How to Stay in Love with Your Entrepreneur in a Crazy Start-up World (Hachette Center Street). She is also a columnist for Inc.com and a regular contributor to Christianity Today. Previously she worked as a nonprofit and social enterprise professional in the U.S., Asia, and Africa. She currently lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband and two adorable hapa sons. Find her online at www.chengtozun.com or on Twitter @dorcas_ct.