Cuss Words and Questions

It's been a difficult few months. 

Illness. Lonliness. Depression. Death.

It's in these recent months that I've truly began to question God's goodness. It's a hard place to be, trying to juggle the tangible depths of pain with the unseen mountains of God's grace and goodness.

How can God be good when He allows our friends and family to fall ill? How is God being good to us when He lets us descend into illness that is debilitating and isolating?

How is God good when we pray that He would send a much needed community to a person's side and yet they stand alone, so sure that they are so alone that they would rather end it all?

How is God good when the sorrows of life seem insurmountable, when the tears can't stop falling and the pain is so strong that you beg He'd take it away?

How good is a God that allows a beautiful, loving, kind young woman to go from living a joyous, impactful life to leaving a void in the lives of everyone who knew her?



Where is the goodness in any of this?





Where is God in all of this?





And that's the thing. 
I don't know the answer.
I don't know any of the answers.
And the people who claim to have the answers can hold their tongues. Really, please, hold your tongue. I don't need to hear the scriptures that people always quote in times like these. I know them.


It's okay to be angry.
It's okay to question.
God is bigger than my cuss words and He's bigger than my doubts.



I choose to live in the tension of not knowing and yet trusting that God is good.

Faith.

anxiety.

It's fear. 
It's anger. 
It's upset tummies and racing heartbeats. 

It's anxiety. 


Anxiety gets me every single time. It seems to overtake me as quickly and mightily as an avalanche of wet BC snow, sliding down a set of vaseline greased marbles on a steep sheet of ice. 
And as stunned as I might seem, I always feel it building. 

Oh yes, the low rumblings, creeping their way into my stomach; 
the hummingbird wings beating in my chest where my heart once was; 
breath... short... lump in throat... inevitable tears where an appropriate response to such seemingly trivial matters should go. 


I seem to have missed some important lessons in my life — like, when I was supposed to tell people how they made me feel, and when they were hurting me. I missed the foundational class of how to express and stick up for myself, without lashing out. Somewhere along the way, I learned that putting other people first, out of love, meant that you were their doormat. 

I was never taught to stick up for myself, out of love. 




A few years back, I finally started the counselling that I knew I'd needed to help me deal with my unresolved issues. It was incredibly helpful to know that, even when I was being completely unreasonable and over-sensitive, my feelings were real and valid. 
I had licence to tell people how they were making me feel. 

Unfortunately, it seemed that, whenever I tried this perfectly legitimate course of action, friendships became tense, I was told off, I wasn't taken seriously. This made for awkward interactions, and, well...


anxiety.




What a tricky little cycle.

What a lonely place to be.

This isn't what God intended.