Mad At God

November 2018

I've been really mad at my husband lately. Like all the time mad at him if I'm being honest. This anger ranged from rolling out of bed with a huff at night to passive aggressive text messages throughout the day. After one of these long days, him trying to figure it out and me listing all the lies in my head while crying myself to sleep, I realized, I was less mad at my husband and more mad at...God.

Recently, I've ugly cried, grit my teeth, and wanted to scream at lots of people in my life, just like my husband. Then I realized, God is bigger than any of this. That's what we are usually comforted by, right? God can handle anything; especially those things that seem to large for us to deal with. He is still in the business of miracles. His will is going to prevail. All those truths are why I'm ultimately mad at him. Not my husband, wayward-friends, DCFS, my kids, strangers. Nope, I'm mad at the One who is in charge of Everything because life in this world is hard and it's all in His hands.

I've told others, mainly students through our years of youth ministry, that it's totally okay to question or get mad at God. He's big enough. He can handle our measly anger and questioning. For whatever reason in our culture, we have been trained to respond to someone's confession of this by spewing scripture, how-tos, hold-in-there's, etc. We don't know how to let people be honest. How to not answer questioning not directed at us. We haven't been trained how to just be alongside someone during difficult times when we can't offer a quick-fix.

In return, we don't know how to question without looking for others to answer for God. We don't know how to be mad, even for a minute. We haven’t been allowed to say it out loud. Even if it's unjustified and we know it; there are benefits to having permission to be shockingly honest and transparent!

With that being said, please don't answer my inevitably transparent questioning to follow. Please just let me say it and be here with me while I do.

I am mad at God because I lost one of my best friends and lots of others over the past few years.

I am mad at God because our church is not in a financial state to pay my husband but we are still expected to and want to do the same jobs.

I am mad at God because my husband had to find another job to support our family and the one God provided is hard.

I am mad at God because homeschooling is hard and my husband doesn't have time to help.

I am mad at God because we started fostering to find children who needed a forever family and we still haven't found them.

I want to know why God hasn't sustained friendships that we've made over the past few years.

I want to know why we aren't seeing progress, miracles, or measurable success in the church we helped plant in an effort to follow Him.

I want to know why, of all the jobs out there, my husband has to have the one that owns him, meaning he can be called in and held longer at any given time.

I want to know why I still feel like I'm supposed to homeschool even though I don't feel good at it and it's beyond hard.

I want to know why we haven't been matched with a child who needs a forever home when there are so many out there that need one.

January 2019

With two months of perspective since writing this, in one of the hardest seasons of life yet, I have come to "forgive" God of my self-righteous anger toward Him. It doesn't change how I felt in the moment. It doesn't take away the hard I had to walk through. Even though I still have few answers, most frustrations and questions still aren't clearly answered, having written this down and said it out loud to a few trusted friends helped me work through my hurt and come back into fellowship with my gracious God again. I am continually going back to the truths in my head and try not to rely on inconsistent emotions feeding me lies to stay in this place during this season of unknowns.

He is good (all the time) and His ways are higher than mine. -Isaiah 55:9
He has plans to prosper not to harm me. -Jeremiah 29:11
Every good and perfect gift comes from Him. -James 1:17
He will never give me more than He can handle. -2 Corinthians 1:8-11
Genuine love will ooze from His followers. -Romans 12:9-19

May 2019

God has provided and deepened friendships I didn't foresee.

God is working through The Church we were a part of to strengthen them in a season without us as their lead and healing our family in areas of hurt we'd been gimping around with unknowingly.

God has allowed my husband favor, fast possibilities for promotion, consistent work keeping us in the home and community we are comfortable in, and most of, to develop all relationships otherwise missed out on due to his currently place of employment.

God is allowing an extended time of rest because we completed our homeschooling early for the school year.

God is continuing to show me He is in charge while asking me to hold things [people] with an open hand to watch what He has in store.

What messy six month confession. Thanks for sitting with me in it while it boiled out of me. Do you need to be transparent something messy in order to work through the hurt? Find a trusted person to start the process of healing alongside today. You won't regret it.