Faith Quake

Faith Quake

He walked through the shadows of tragedy and emerged stronger on the other side.

THOSE best qualified to teach us about suffering and hope are those who have walked through the shadows of tragedy and emerged stronger on the other side. Doug Herman is one such person. This is his story.

“In a two-month period my life and faith came to a crashing climax. Evon [my wife] was going to die. . . . My infant daughter Ashli . . . was an AIDS baby just six months of age. My grandfather—a wonderful Christian man—died of liver cancer. Then we found out that my youngest brother Dan had acute myeloblastic leukemia. . . . I had had enough. God was supposed to be my refuge and hiding place! I was a minister! I had given Him my life.”

Doug and Evon Herman were high school sweethearts before their marriage in 1981. They had both loved the Lord since childhood and followed his calling into ministry together.

The Hermans were thrilled at the birth of their first child, Joshua, on February 19, 1985. In the hospital, as Doug wondered at the miracle of the new life in his arms, two units of blood dripped slowly into Evon’s vein to replace blood lost during the delivery. Eighteen months later, they were shattered by the news that the blood had been contaminated with HIV. When the HIV tests came back, Doug’s and Joshua’s tests were negative, but Evon’s was positive. They had a second baby, Ashli, who was also found to be positive.

Doug was tortured by the question, “Where was God during the blood transfusion that would eventually kill my wife?” Doug and Evon battled both physical and spiritual assaults. “All the while our faith was torn between the God of love we had known all our lives and the God who seemed so unconcerned. Instead of standing firm, our faith quaked.”

Doug pleaded with God for answers, but God was silent. Fearing AIDS, Doug’s church did not renew his pastoral call. A few months later two-year-old Ashli died in Doug’s arms; Evon was too sick to be at her daughter’s deathbed.

Nine months later, in September 1991, came the moment that Doug had dreaded. The doctor gently told him the choice for his wife was either two days of suffering hooked up to a machine and then death or two hours of suffering and death. As Doug sat before the doctor with tears streaming down his face, a voice flashed through his mind, “Evon has fought the good fight of faith. She has run her race in life. There is now laid up for her a crown of righteousness.”

Doug turned to the doctor, “Let my wife go Home. I don’t want her to suffer any longer.” As Doug sat by Evon’s side weeping, a single tear trickled down her cheek. Then she was gone, and Doug Herman became a bewildered, grieving, single parent.

One day Doug took six-year-old Joshua to the pediatrician’s office for an inoculation. “I’m not sick, Daddy,” Josh protested. “Please, Daddy, I don’t want a shot!”

“It’s going to be all right,” Doug assured him, holding his son on the exam table.

“When they stuck him with the needle, Josh looked straight at me. Looking deep into my eyes as I firmly held his head he cried, ‘Daddy!’ It was only one word, but his look said a million words, ‘Daddy, why the pain? Why are you letting them hurt me? It’s not my fault. Why, Daddy? I thought you loved me?’”

“My eyes burned with tears as my mind suddenly raced to the familiar phrases I had uttered months before. ‘Why, God? I thought you were my Father! Why, Daddy, why?’ . . . Very clearly God spoke to my heart in that moment. He simply said, ‘It’s the same with you and me.’ . . . God . . . has no desire to see His children suffer. But if this temporal suffering provides a greater blessing, whether we understand it or not, He will allow it. He sees what we cannot.”

Reflection

Have you faced tragedy in your life? If you haven’t yet, you will someday. What we often fail to realize is that the Christian life includes suffering. Rather than be surprised when we suffer, we should be surprised when we don’t.

Though our bodies are dying, our spirits are being renewed every day. For our present troubles are quite small and won’t last very long. . . . But the joys to come will last forever.

2 Corinthians 4:16-18