"It's OK To Question"

Being in relationship with God can sometimes be very tough. For those who have lost a family member or a child prematurely or for those who have suffered from cancer or some other life altering illness, a relationship with God can be like being in relationship with your worst enemy.

In January of this year, I lost one of my best friends, Amber Perry, to suicide. My relationship with Amber began in 2000 when we were both working on the Department of Energy Cleanup Site together. Amber was cute, funny, smart and she had the most infectious laugh. I can still hear the sound of her laugh in my head sometimes. I hope I never lose that sound. Amber moved away to Georgia for another job a few years ago so our visits were limited to just a few times per year. I was blessed to be able to share time with her and her mother a few months before her death. I don’t know why she did what she did. I can speculate but I will never truly know what was going on inside her head. What I do know is that I went through a period of guilt. I still have her last voice mail exactly one week before her death on my phone where she told me what a great friend I was and how much she loved and respected me. While I should feel good about THAT…I don’t because what I remember is speaking with her 10 days before her death where she shared with me how sad she was about her job loss in Georgia and how she hated driving back and forth to Knoxville and how she felt she would never meet anyone special to share her life with. I told her she had so much to be grateful for…a great mom, a beautiful daughter and even a job even though it was not the job she wanted. I scolded her for not recognizing how blessed she was.

What I shoulda, woulda, coulda done was…..LISTEN! While I am not pretending to know what it is like to lose a child or a spouse…I do know what it is like to question God and how he can let bad things happen to good people. I definitely have been that girl who has stood in the middle of the living room and professed hatred for my FATHER. And I am pretty sure that was me not to long ago on my knees asking the why questions with tears streaming down my face. What I also know is that God likes that….it’s called a relationship. While I may not always understand, and I may even get mad at God to the point I need to ask for forgiveness, I have decided that especially in trying to reconcile my guilty feelings surrounding my relationship with Amber that I have to trust God for not only the good, but also the bad in my life. Only God knows all the purposes behind catastrophic events. I have to trust Him to have known these events and if I were guilty of any harm, to claim His forgiveness, then forgive myself.

I think what most of us struggle with in the area of forgiving GOD for awful things that happen in this world like, death, starvation, rape, murder etc. is that when we forgive our enemies for harming us in some way…they may still be our enemy…it is very tangible because you can see it and feel it. When we reconcile with God, we may not hear anything but silence and we are left having to grasp for the good that this life has to offer and having to rely on our faith that he loves us. I mean he must LOVE US as he sent his ONLY son to die for us. He was not selfish when he sent Jesus to die on the cross….. Life is not fair or easy. It was not meant to be so. There is no place in the Bible that says life is fair and quite frankly I don’t want it to be. It also does not promise us that life is going to be easy. Life is an experience…a learning experience….one lesson after another. For some of us, learning can be very painful and can feel hopeless, without explanation and without a reason as to what that lesson was all about or what it was trying to teach us.

God’s reconciliation of me to Him through his Son is the answer to the hurts I can not comprehend. Forgiveness will not take away yours or mine extreme pain and sadness . It also will not take away our suffering right now. But, suffering and pain is temporary and will end. Paul wrote to the Christians on the subject of pain and what God wants for us when dealing with pain and suffering. It comes from the book of Colossians 2:2-3. “That your hearts might be comforted, being united in love, and to all riches of the full assurance of understanding, to the acknowledgement of the mystery of God, and of the Father, and of Christ; In whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.”

I am a cancer survivor. We all know many people that were not quite so lucky. I could be angry about why God would let me get cancer at all but I prefer to look at the glass half full vs. half empty. I am thankful for not dying right now but if I ever become terminally ill, I will choose to still thank God for letting me eek out a few extra years to continue with my life lessons. I will sometimes still question God’s methods and actions. And I will admit to often not understanding them….but I will stand on this scripture when I am having a difficult moment with God…a come to Jesus meeting shall we say….“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.” Isaiah 55: 8-9.

God will not punish you for being angry or even questioning because that means you are having a relationship with HIM even if it is just yelling and crying. It has to start somewhere.