How Do You Learn to Live with Hurt in your Heart…

… And Where is God

     When your pain leads you to the question WHY God?

     I think to some degree, if you have lived on this earth for any period of time, you have had some sort of hurt happen to you. Sometimes it happens for a short period of time and the situation is resolved, but sometimes it is an illness of a loved one and it hurts really bad initially, and you don’t know how long the hurt will last, at first everything seems like a blur, you pray for the best and get prepared for the worst.

     In my life I have always tried to be empathetic to those around me who have a loved one with an illness, in whatever capacity I can. I can never understand what they are going through, but I offer support in my own human limited capacity. The longer you live the more you come across this. When I was very involved in Christian ministry the prayer was non-stop for those who were sick, dying, hurt, in terrible situations and somehow you just preserve through it, you empathize with it but ultimately you give it to the Lord, eventually try to let go of the burden and you move on. That’s what I did. Moved on from prayer ministry all together, its like any other job, you get burnt out, you feel overworked, under appreciated, the only hope is that your are doing something for the greater good and one day your reward is in heaven. I can’t say that I’ve yet to recover, I’ve defiantly seen some miracles, maybe seen some others, and who knows about the rest. There is no instant reward for this kind of work, no glory, no acknowledgment all you receive is another email that the church needs more money and more volunteers. Prayer is expected as a Christian, but the importance never acknowledged. We rely solely on faith, faith that God hears, faith that everything will be okay, this is what you are supposed to do.

     What about when the real questions come out? The questions that start with WHY God? Whether you believe in God or not, often both believer and non-believers ask this question. If I’m honest with myself, I too find myself asking this question, on many different fronts, both in world matters and personal matters. I can say that often He answers me, in of course, mysterious ways, but it doesn’t mean that it makes sense. I find myself asking God Why, I find myself trying to learn to pray again, and something that was so natural before seems so difficult now. Why? The answer is easy, because of all the hurt I’ve experienced, because of all the unexplainable events I’ve seen. I am thankful that God planted deep roots in me, roots to believe and trust in Him, because even in my completely messed up, human state, I can stand before the Lord, in no fancy language, and ask Him, WHY God? Please help me to understand, please show me how to pray, please give my brother healing and understanding and faith and hope. The kind of faith that I used to have, the kind of faith that can move mountains, the kind of faith that can heal the sick and that can raise the dead. Lord we are nothing but broken humans and we, your children, need you, we need to you come to earth and bring your healing. Ultimately you are God, this is not the end, and we Love you.

     So we sit here on earth, broken hearted, but holding on to God and his glory and His love, hoping, praying for a miracle.

You Can Run But You Can’t Hide…

Where am I? How did I get here? So far from the passion I used to have in my heart, so far from the beauty I used to see in the broken. All I see now is the ugliness, the hurt, the evil and the hatred. Even as I sit here there is a women on T.V. speaking about all the rape and human trafficking that occurs everyday in India, the “Untouchables”, and my heart just aches for them. I just finished reading a book of a girl’s story who escaped North Korea with her mother through human trafficking, but they were so naïve and that they did not know what was happening to them until they were raped and sold in China as slave wives, she was 13 years old. This makes me sick. Every day I see the ugliness of how human beings treat each other, and I know I’m just as guilty as anyone, carrying hatred in my heart, but I’ve given up caring. I’ve lost hope. My heart is utterly convicted.

Would I even call myself a Christian anymore? What does it mean to be a Christian? All I see is around me is whitewashed tombs, but where is the authenticity? I started reading some of my old blogs, its been nagging at me for months to do this, so last night, in the middle of the night, I read about 20 or so. I didn’t recognize that I wrote any of those things, who was that girl that had unyielding passion and devotion to Jesus? She was fearless, she was passionate, and she was on a mission to serve Jesus no matter the cost. What happened?

When I think of what my life has been in the last 5 years, a lot of it actually has been pretty great, I may be hitting a lot of road blocks right now, but I had some pretty incredible things happen to me, like meeting a man who I can 100% be myself with and who loves me more than I can comprehend. I know that God has still been doing a lot of work in me, in a more practical everyday life type of way, so the side of me that spent hours deep in prayer slowly dissipated over the years, for better or for worse.

So I sit here, knowing I can run from God’s plan for my life, but I can’t hide. I think what I’ve realized is that we get to “co-labor” with God for our life plan, and that is the hardest part, we get to choose, sometimes it seems that it would just be so much easier if God would just tell us what to do, or where to go. Some people know what they want to do in life, that is just not me. I want to help the less fortunate, the women who are human trafficked, but life certainly does not make it easy to help, there are always rules and processes for everything. If I had listened to all the rules and processes that I would suppose to follow to go to Haiti, I never would have ended up going there. The miracles that happened there, including delivering a baby in the tent city of Port au Prince, could not be planned, or prepared for, I didn’t need to spend thousands of dollars and become a nurse to do that, God was there. I loved that trip because it always felt God led, spirit driven, I see the chain effect of that trip even today through the people who work in Haiti, thanks to social media.

I came across one blog last night that I wrote, at the time I felt I was going to write a book called “Choosing to be Chosen”. It really stuck out to me, I’ve been watching a program on T.V. where the guy being interviewed wrote a book called “Choosing and Choosing Again”, I actually wrote the name of the book down yesterday morning. From what I gather, his book is about continuing to choose God after hurts and after thinking that we know all there is to know about God. I think what I must have had in my spirit when I was thinking about writing a book is that God chooses us, but He doesn’t force us, we too must choose to be chosen by God, to follow his ways, it is rarely the easy path. What I would have written 5 years ago may look very different that what I would write now, but I know my heart for God is still the same, it hasn’t changed, my soul still yearns to follow His ways, I’m just not sure what that looks like anymore. I can’t go back, I can only go forward, searching for a place I can go, a place where God will be welcomed, a place where equality not only means me accepting other people for who they are, but others accepting me as someone who loves God, but is a little lost and a little out hope. I haven’t given up on my journey yet as I search for my calling, but I fight the battle each day as best as I can.

Two times since we’ve moved to our new home we have driven by the end of a rainbow on the road to our place, along with another rainbow at work during the recent storms. I think God must be saying that there is Always HOPE, never give up. So I press on and search for the path I lost.