Walls Come Crashing Down: Losing God

Have you ever lost something of importance?  Say, like when you were a child and you had some type of blanky that you took every where, you slept with – that your parents gave you when you were upset and it immediately calmed you down?  Your security blanket…did you ever loose something like that?

This is exactly the idea of what I have seen happening in my life with God over the last year or so.  The God I once thought I knew – the one that worked everything together for the good of the one He loves, that tells me to ask for whatever I want in His name and it will be given to me, the One that HATES divorce and loves the union He created between man and women – well, He seems to have all but disappeared these last months much to my dismay.

As I sit here now, I can honestly say that I have not even heard from God in months….not like I did back at the end of last summer.  Gosh, when I think back to those times – times when it felt like God was ever present in my moment to moment conversations with Him – when He would seem to give me so much direction, encouragement and hope through verses that He would point me to…I have to question myself.  Was I REALLY hearing Him?  Did He  REALLY tell me some of the things back then…or was it just something I ate?  Was it just my own desires that led me to BELIEVE I was hearing from Him?

….Because frankly at this point in time I would say that God doesn’t exist if I based my belief, my faith off of hearing from God.  I feel like I am a lone wanderer out in the void of light sifting through the darkness…trying to find my balance to no avail.  I do not even feel that HOPE I did when I wrote about it in my “In Grieving” series.  Everything I once held dear, the knowledge I felt I had of God and of who He was…well, it all seems like hogwash now.

I find myself staring into a bleak future where nothing at this point seems certain.  I am scared at the way my life is looking right now: that I am alone yet with kids, with no job even on the horizon.  {Not to mention all the feelings that go behind those thoughts that I must sort through…that I must discover what I am truly basing my self-worth on…gosh, I guess one is never done with being prone to looking to relationships, careers, etc. for self-worth.}

I have no idea how all these things are going to pull together in the end…and yet I know the pat “Christian” answer is that it will all turn out at the end.  That God is just waiting for me to have some big revelation of faith before He knocks my socks off with the right job, the right path, etc., etc.

Yet, life up to this point quite frankly hasn’t turned out okay for me?  How is it turning out for you?  Is adulthood all that you thought it would be, the big bowl of ice cream with cherries on top?

I do not want to tell you a lie – I am not sure if I even have faith right now that things will turn out okay.  And I do not want to hear back from you that they will…that God knows everything that will happen to me and that it will all be okay…for that is not the God that I know anymore…and I’m not sure I even have a grasp on the God I am now seeing.

For in my old world, in my old way of thinking…a real God would NEVER allow all the things that have happened to me to happen.  He would NEVER allow all the horrible awful things in this world like sex trafficking and abuse of children and women to happen.  He would stop all the wars between nations and between family members.  A real God would have never forsaken His only son on the cross…to be left totally and utterly alone – devoid of friends, of religious and political leaders…and most of all of Himself.

Yet, in the real world – these things happen and happen every day…and there is no nice, neat little bow to wrap God up into when these things go on around us every day.  More people are enslaved today than ever before – in our modern age of progressive thinking!  And when I mention “enslaved” I am not just talking about sex trafficking – as horrific as that enslavement is.  No, I am also mentioning how many of us are enslaved in even more subtle ways – to our own thoughts and habits that keep us from truly experiencing freedom as we were meant to.

Sure we try to fit our “security blanket” God around these things…yet these are just bandaids we offer hurt, lost and desperate people.  No wonder so many people turn away from God when these bandaids are offered.  People want a God that is real, that can address their real concerns and their real heartaches about their pain and the pain they see in the world…not some God that just makes them feel good for a moment.  Not some God that just pats them on the back and says that all will be okay in the end.

When is that end?  When and how does it come?  Is it the afterlife…just some promise of eternal life in some unknown land doing some unknown thing(s)?  That doesn’t sound very comforting to me.  I mean, how am I to get through daily life right now with all the pain, with all the overwhelming grief and with all the uncertainty of what tomorrow holds – let alone the next few hours — with just the “hope” of some far off heaven where I will be wearing shinny white garments, walking on pearly streets and singing songs that I might not even be that in to?

No, I don’t believe in that God any more –  that God I was “raised” to believe in.  I can honestly say that after all my Earthquakes that that God no longer exists…and the scary thing is I am not sure what does.  I know that my thoughts about God is that He is so much bigger, grandeur and mightier than I can even fathom…but at this point…as of today – this is all I can muster.

I cannot give myself the false hope that everything is going to be A-Okay, hunky dory, etc.  It wasn’t when my mom died, leaving me an orphan to basically fend for myself at age 9.  It wasn’t when I was a scared teenager living in a home of alcoholics and kids doped up on drugs.  It wasn’t okay after my first child was born and I developed a severe case of postpartum depression.  It isn’t okay right now as I look at my own family life and the sad, sorry state that it has ended up in.

I know, I know – but I am all about practicing joy even in the midst of all this right?  That I am all about rephrasing my mind to look at all these negative things and to see where and what I can learn from them.  I know.

Yet, one thing I have learned is that as humans, we have to learn to sit in the uncomfortableness that is life.  For – unlike what I once believed as a child – adulthood is not a bunch of ice cream with cherries on top.  No, it is really a big, fat kick in the ass by reality day-ater-day-after-day.  Sure there are some good times nuzzled in there…and sure we need to take time out to celebrate the good, to remember the good so we don’t fully go over the deep end…but for the most part this world is REALLY, REALLY hard to live in with lots of hurts and disappointments, anger and frustrations, depressions and anxieties.  And if I don’t learn to sit in them – learn to sit in the mire and grit and dirt just as Job did in his horrendous mid-life curses – then I feel like I will just be sugar coating life, placating it with a “security blanket” and never learning to grow up into adulthood.

So, while I know many of us – me included – would be quick to try to bring comfort and hope and encouragement to someone in my situation – I am asking that you do not do that for me now.  No, I am asking of you and of myself that you just let me sit in my grief, in my tears mixed with grime and soot – that you just let me sit in my uncertainty of what my future holds…that you let me doubt faith and the God I have known and – well to doubt everything.  That I would allow the walls to continue to crash down around me…that I would allow the earthquakes to finish happening…that I would roll around in the “floundering” that is my life right now….that I would continue to allow myself to be “forsaken by God”…for I feel like this is real and true and honest and in a odd way – like Christ on the cross.

This exercise I must warn you is not for the faint of heart…it is not for the kids among or in us.  Doing something like this takes drive, determination and fortitude…and I understand many of us might not be ready to do this.  Might not be ready to “Kiss the God We Know Good-Bye”.  That many might think I have really gone off the deep-end of the pool to never have returned.  I am okay with this…for I know we are each on our own journey and that we must allow each other to take our own journey at our own pace and timing.

Yet, for those who want to see what is just over the great abyss, for those that are willing to kiss their “security blankets” good-bye and for those that have already done this – I welcome you on this journey.  I thank you for showing me the way, for allowing me to sit with you and when ready – to stand with you in this new place that is unlike anything I have ever known…