Faith in the Field of Loss

Someone I love has stage 4 cancer, she also just survived a school shooting this year. There are no soft words for that. No way to make it make sense or to wrap it in something that feels fair. How can one life carry that much, and so young too? If we are honest, the question underneath that one is even harder: why her? Why do some people walk through unimaginable hardship while others seem untouched, even blessed? I don’t have an answer that satisfies that question, but I am learning where to stand when the weight of it presses in.

Right now, my daughter and I are walking through the Book of Job together, and I cannot ignore the timing. Job was described as blameless, faithful, upright. A man who feared God and turned away from evil. And still, everything was taken from him. Not because he failed, not because he deserved it, but because God allowed it. “The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord” (Job 1:21). That verse does not soften the blow or explain the pain. It simply declares a truth most of us resist: God is still God when everything is taken. We want faith to mean protection, obedience to mean safety, goodness to result in comfort. But Job dismantles that. A faithful life is not a shield against suffering. Sometimes it is the very place suffering meets purpose.

When we ask, “Why is this happening?” What we are often really asking is why it wasn’t prevented. And beneath that is something even deeper: what did I believe would never be taken from me? Health, safety, our children, our plans, our sense of control. These are all good gifts, but they were never promises. “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth… For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matthew 6:19–21). If our peace is rooted in anything that can be taken, then eventually it will be shaken. This is not cruel, it is clarifying, because God will not share His place with anything temporary. What in this world is your idol right now?

I get asked a certain question often on the farm, usually casually: “what do you do if it hails? Do you just start all over?” And my answer is simple. Yes, I just start all over, because I have to, and I have! There is no greenhouse yet, no hail tarps, no systems in place to fully protect what I am growing. We put months of work into the ground—seeds started, beds prepared, soil tended—and one storm can come through in minutes and shred it all. Hail doesn’t ask if you’re ready. Wind doesn’t care how hard you worked. Late snow doesn’t check your planting schedule. It just comes. And when it does, I have a choice. I can stand in the field and grieve what was lost, or I can kneel down, press my hands back into the soil, and begin again. 

I joke that I do a lot of work for an industry that really just relies on it raining but not STORMING. 

My mother was taken from me in 2011, dramatically and unexpectedly. How can I not understand the loss of things being taken?

There is a kind of surrender that is forced, and there is a kind that is chosen, and farming has taught me both. Because the truth is, I cannot control what is taken from me. Not in the field and not in life. I cannot control storms, diagnoses, or the circumstances that enter into the lives of the people I love. And if I build my identity, my peace, or my faith on the assumption that I can, it will collapse. “What do you have that you did not receive?” (1 Corinthians 4:7). Everything I have is something I was first given, which means I was never the owner, only the steward. And stewards hold things with open hands, even when it hurts.

There is a line that becomes very clear when you’ve lost something, or when you’re faced with the reality that you might. What can be taken, and what cannot. The farm can be taken. The flowers can be taken. Health can be taken. Even the people we love can be taken from this side of eternity. But God cannot be taken. His presence does not leave with loss, His goodness is not erased by suffering, and His sovereignty is not threatened by what we don’t understand. “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Hebrews 13:8). When everything else is stripped away, what remains is what was always meant to be the foundation. Not the gifts, but Him. Because in the end, we take nothing with us—no harvest, no possessions—only what is eternal. The faith we walked in, the obedience we chose, the people we pointed toward Him.

So when I say, “Yes, I just start over,” it is not because it is easy. It is because I have already decided what my life is built on. My farm is not my idol, the flowers are not my security, and the outcome is not my identity. God is. Which means I am free to begin again, not with resentment or fear, but with a kind of faith that does not need guarantees. The kind of faith a seed carries. A seed goes into the ground not knowing what will come against it. It does not demand perfect conditions; it responds when the time is right, and it grows.

I was miscarrying my baby this day. There is nothing that can compare to the loss of a baby that was so prayed for.

If you are reading this and you have lost something, I am not going to tell you to rush past that. Grieve it. Name it. Feel the weight of it. But do not let it define what you believe about God. And if you are afraid of losing something, I understand that too, because loving anything deeply comes with risk. But we were never called to live guarded lives, clinging tightly to what might be taken. We were called to live open-handed, rooted in something that cannot be. So step back into your garden, the literal one or the one inside your heart. Pick up what is left, turn the soil again, and plant again. Not because nothing will ever be taken, but because even if it is, God is still worthy of your faith. We cannot take anything but our faith, and others we have discipled into heaven. That is what matters. That is what we are farming here. So if I have to get up, time after time and start over, I will with child-like excitement worshiping my God in this life, in this way. 

My loved one’s story does not make sense to me. Job’s story does not make sense to me. God’s knowledge is infinite, and if I am honest, I do not need to understand, because my understanding was never meant to be the foundation of my faith. God was. So I will plant again, I will trust again, and I will worship again, even if it is all taken, because He is still good.

Listen, we all have experienced loss, disappointment, trials, and tribulations. I hope that these words can bring us together. To know that we are all walking this earth with our own different challenges but with an understanding that we all live under His roof. And He, if only Him, is what we have in common, than I consider myself blessed to have you as my sister, friend.

With love,
Jessica
with Shari Ann Farms

PS. please pray for my loved one, she is so young and has been through so much. I do not know God’s plan, but I do know he hears our prayers and he knows our hearts.