{"id":1958,"date":"2016-11-07T10:42:04","date_gmt":"2016-11-07T15:42:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/throughbrokenroses\/?p=1958"},"modified":"2016-11-07T21:01:02","modified_gmt":"2016-11-08T02:01:02","slug":"the-dark-night-of-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/throughbrokenroses\/2016\/11\/07\/the-dark-night-of-life\/","title":{"rendered":"The Dark Night of Life"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"glass-1352401_640\"<\/a>
Picture Credit: Pixabay<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

I know that everyone is ready to lay around in despair over the election results tomorrow, so I should try to write something upbeat and positive. Unfortunately, that just isn\u2019t how my life works. Upbeat and positive are two things that my life rarely is. I was abandoned by my father before I was born so I was raised by a single mother who worked all the time, I was sexually abused as a small child and I am an only child so I spent most of my childhood alone. I wasn\u2019t exactly set up for a life of upbeat and positive. Not that I don\u2019t have a good life, or didn\u2019t have good times in my life, but I am just not the ambassador of optimism. Things generally suck in my life more than they don\u2019t suck. My life is like Seattle, rainy and dreary yet beautiful where some other people\u2019s lives are like Southern California with beaches, yoga and sunshine. I wouldn\u2019t know what to do with all that Zen.<\/p>\n

The reason that I am telling ya\u2019ll this isn\u2019t to depress you or make you feel better about your life, but it\u2019s because I can\u2019t hold it in anymore. I write. It is what I do. I have to let things out an onto a page in words for them to make sense and for me to figure out what I need to do next. I\u2019ve tried writing as if I am a barrel of sunshine and Zen but that only makes me gloomier and so here I am, being me. I don\u2019t ever have to give the \u201cI am just going to be real for a minute\u201d disclaimer because good or bad, I am just always real.<\/p>\n

I am having a serious faith crisis. It is not that I do not believe God exists but I am starting to wonder if He is so busy with other people\u2019s real<\/em> problems that He isn\u2019t noticing that everything in my life is on fire. A really big fire.<\/p>\n

Let me just stop here and warn anyone who is tempted to tell me how amazing it is to suffer for the Lord or how He is making me a saint to not say those things or anything that remotely resembles them. If you do, I will find you and punch you in the face and tell you how God wants you to suffer a black eye to make you a saint.<\/p>\n

Like I said, my life has always been hard. I have struggled with one thing after another. A lot of my struggles I put on myself for sure, but some of them I had no control over. I had no control over my father leaving, I had no control over my mom moving in with a pedophile who would abuse me, I had no control over the clothes I wore or the fact that I didn\u2019t speak English when I started school so I was the target of other kids\u2019 teasing and I was not capable of handling all that on my own without a loving and supportive mother or siblings. So maybe it is weakness on my part that expects for God to help me now so that my life can be a little bit easier than it has been for the last forty years.<\/p>\n

I read this quote the other day about how if you make yourself available to God incredible things will happen. You know what I got by making myself available to God? A job waiting tables, I reputation of being who knows what based on who you\u2019re talking to, my kids have all lost their minds, my house is in foreclosure, my car is about to die even though I just put a new motor and starter in it ($3,000 worth of work, $3,000 I don\u2019t have), my classes are way too hard for me, my husband is tired and I am pretty sure that God is legit justified in smiting us all so I\u2019m cynical on top of everything else. I also no longer feel God\u2019s presence in my life. At all. Not even when I know His Grace is pouring down on me. I feel nothing.<\/p>\n

The other night my granddaughter choked on a lollipop. I asked everyone that I knew to pray. I had to ask for other people to pray because I couldn\u2019t. All I could do was think that God might let her die because He lets children die all the time. She is fine but I can\u2019t shake the feeling that maybe it was just pure luck because how can I say that God answered the prayers for her while plenty of parents are praying for their children and don\u2019t have those prayers answered because those children die? I prayed for my uncle non-stop and he died with a look in his eye that said he did not want to die. The hospice nurse kept telling us to tell him that it was ok to go, but it was totally not ok<\/em>. Not at all.<\/p>\n

Yesterday I was at work and my co-workers were talking about a table full of church ladies. They said that Christians don\u2019t believe in tipping but they will pray for you. Everyone had a good laugh as I stood in the middle of them all mocking my faith. One part of me was angry because if I were to say that Muslims don\u2019t tip or black people don\u2019t tip or Asians don\u2019t tip or gay people don\u2019t tip or any other group of people don\u2019t tip, I would be called a bigot or racist, but it was totally cool to mock my faith in front of me. Not only cool but egged on and encouraged. Then my anger shifted from my coworkers to Christians who sit on their computers all day long being assholes in public and give us all a bad name. Then my anger shifted to God. Why the fuck am I even working in this place while other people are able to make a living off talking about God or\u00a0any number of other things that don\u2019t require them to wait tables? Why me? Because I said that I wanted to evangelize? Well, I take that shit back. Or is it because I don\u2019t hide my hardships? I don\u2019t have the ability to pretend like following God makes \u201cincredible things happen\u201d.<\/p>\n

Maybe all those people who I think have it easy really do have problems like I do but have the sense to keep it to themselves instead of laying it all out for the world to see. I don\u2019t have that gift\u2026.<\/p>\n

My life is hard, my life has always been hard and I am pretty sure that it is always going to be hard no matter what I do. I really don\u2019t know how to match that up with a God who is supposed to love me so much and take care of me. Maybe it is what I need to give up control and just trust God. Stop fighting and just do what He asks of me, even when it is difficult. Mother Teresa did it even with fifty years of spiritual dryness. I am only at six months, maybe a year.<\/p>\n

Please pray for me. **<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

**I do not want any advice. No novenas, no retreats, no \u201cread this book\u201d, none of it. None. That isn\u2019t code for \u201cfind me on the internet and send me a private message. God is NOT telling you to give me a message. No, just no.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I know that everyone is ready to lay around in despair over the election results tomorrow, so I should try to write something upbeat and positive. Unfortunately, that just isn\u2019t how my life works. Upbeat and positive are two things that my life rarely is. 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