Even if He Doesn’t: What We Believe about God When Life Doesn’t Make Sense

By Kristen LaValley

Life is not easy and it certainly can be messy. Just ask Kristen LaValley who with her husband suffered a miscarriage, loss of position in their church, income, and home through what certainly felt like betrayal by friends who turned their backs on the couple. They were faced with the necessity of deciding who should live—twin 1, twin 2, and/or mom. Along with traumatic events over the years, add in the changes that accompany situations like this—finding new friends and trusting them, moving, knowing what to say to well-meaning friends and family, anxiety attacks, health issues, and reconciling their life complications with what they know about a good God.

LaValley does not compare her sufferings with anyone else’s—suffering is suffering. She shares what it meant in her life and describes God’s faithfulness as she made her way through her life journey. Her story is not a comfortable one, but it is valuable to see how she relied on God through the high and low points. It is important to see how God is with us even when He doesn’t answer prayers the way we think He should. He is good because that is His character.

I received a complimentary copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

Rating: 4/5

Category: Christian, Nonfiction, Religion, Spiritual Growth

Notes: 1. For some reason, my digital copy of this book disappeared so I checked out an audio version from my library. I’m glad I did. The author did a great job of reading her own book. We all suffer in different ways, and we all know others who are suffering. We need to know how to react to those in pain. Even if you don’t agree with every detail in the book, you can benefit from it. Life is a journey, and we are all involved in discerning the best way to trust in God and move forward with Him as our guide. You are not necessarily at the same place in your trip as LaValley is, but we share a common struggle.

  2. Even if He Doesn’t includes a lot of Scripture references that LaValley uses to support her thoughts on suffering.

Publication:   February 20, 2024—Tyndale Momentum

Memorable Lines:

The comfort of “even if he doesn’t” isn’t just that one day he will, which I fully believe. It’s that he’s good anyway. He’s faithful anyway. He’s loving anyway. Even when he doesn’t.

When our image of God is dependent on things going the way we believe they should, our image of him is centered on us, not on him. But true faith isn’t believing God is good just because we have proof of it. Faith is believing that he’s good even when we don’t have proof.

The idea that God wants us to suffer (for any reason) stands in direct contradiction to the life, testimony, and work of Christ. Jesus came to take our suffering on himself, not to have us prove something by our own suffering.