This journey is such an up and down roller coaster. I never know from one day to the next how I’m gonna be doing. Before our loss, I could wake up in the morning and pretty well set my mind to something and accomplish it. These days, I may wake up feeling one way, or have a specific goal for the day in mind, but staying in that mindset or accomplishing that goal is not so easy. Most days, I feel like the simple tasks of daily living are an incredible challenge. The little pile of laundry in the basket in the corner of our bedroom seems like an impossible mountain. The stack of unpaid bills on the counter too is mountainous (and actually IS impossible when we don’t have money to back the checks I write to pay them), and cooking dinner that actually looks and tastes good is usually daunting as well. Some days, or parts of days, I feel o.k. There are even some days that I feel pretty good for big chunks of time. It’s just so easy though, to get set off by even the slightest comment or happening in my day. I feel like a tightrope walker, a very unstable one at that. The slightest breeze comes along and before I know it, I’ve fallen off again. Lucky for me, there is a net to catch me. Sometimes I forget it’s there and it seems like I fall for a very long time before I realize I’m not alone. God is here to catch me each and every time I fall.
I was listening to the radio the other day in my car. I haven’t been listening to music much because, as I said, I get knocked off kilter so easily. Music does such amazing, wonderful, powerful things for the soul, for the mind, for the heart. Normally, I love to drive and turn up the volume and belt it out, but at this time, with my heart so very tender, most songs are too much for me to handle. I’ve driven for many months in silence, for fear of crying while on my way to work, or the grocery store, or wherever I happen to be going. I feel good when I cry, don’t get me wrong. Crying is such a release for me these days, but I don’t want to be showing up with a red, snotty nose, bloodshot eyes and mascara streaks wherever I go. So for a few months I mostly drove in silence. But then it got to the point where my thoughts were too much, and the music became a nice distraction. Music doesn’t make me cry as much now, and often times it’s more uplifting than my thoughts which race and spiral in such negative directions if let loose for too long. I don’t like messing with CDs while driving, and I’m not technologically advanced enough to have my iPod hooked up in the car yet, so I listen to the radio - all kinds of music stations – talk, mellow, techno, hip-hop, classical, Christian.
So I was listening to a Christian station the other day, and this lady came on and started talking about the challenging times in life. She said that we all find ourselves in trying and challenging times and bla bla bla and on and on about how tough things can be and how it’s hard to see God’s hand in it all. I felt like I could connect very well with what she was saying, because I currently find myself in the most challenging time of all my life. So I felt good. I felt consoled. And then she went on to say that God has divinely designed these challenging times in order to stretch and grow us. That God wants us to learn something in each trial and so He creates them to make us learn.
EXCUSE ME?!
I got really upset and yelled at the lady on the Christian radio station who couldn’t hear a word I was saying. I told her, and I told myself, and I’ll tell you now that I don’t believe for one second that God designed for Ghaith and I to lose our child in the traumatic and painful way we did in order to “stretch” us. I just can’t justify or make sense of that perspective on God. I do believe He can use this horrible time in positive ways, and I am seeing a few of those come to light even now, but I refuse to believe God would purposefully design a challenge such as losing my child in order to teach me something. I just don’t buy it. I think God is much more loving than that. I believe He can bring light out of our darkest places, but I don’t believe He purposefully designs the dark places. Maybe I’m wrong, but I just refuse to see my Father God in such a way. Why would He create a difficult situation for me, just to watch my heart break and let me fall over and over again, so that He can then catch me and lift me back up each time. That sounds like the schemes of a God lacking in self-confidence, who needs to create situations in which he can look good and feel needed. I don’t think God is like that. He doesn’t need me to need him. He doesn’t need anything from me.
No comments:
Post a Comment