And Where is God?

I think that it is about time to admit to myself and the outside world that lately I have not been in the best place with God.  I know at this point your mouth is dropping down to the floor shocked by my revelation.

But I think it is time to get real with my self and to get real with God.  In fact there really is no getting real with God because He already knows everything.  He knows my frustrations, fears, pain, and He knows that I am not in a good place with Him right now.  Therefore why try to trick myself into thinking that I can hide this fact from God.

If you have read my book then you know some of the struggles that I had to face in recent years.  However the struggle continues in different areas.  I am overly educated and extremely underpaid.  In fact it seems like the more educated I get, the less money I make.  And this is not supposed to be.  Due to changes in the mental health field as well as the economy people expect you to go work for pennies on the dollar despite your education and experience.

This is an area that I am frustrated with God with the most.  Back BEFORE I finished my Master’s degree I used to make $15,000 more than what I make now.  This is a huge deal for me because my mortgage and lifestyle is based off that income.

It would seem that despite my constant prayers that I am always struggling just to make the bare minimum of things that I need.  As Christians we say that we can always pray to God in whatever situation that we are going through.  But what happens, when God is not answering those prayers?  When you are still left struggling?


This honestly is just one aspect of my life.  A few months ago my cousin (who is like my sister) lost her 3 month old baby.  It really did go beyond that.  He had so many unprecedented complications that only happens to 1% of babies.  He spend all of his time in the hospital, he was around doctors that felt it was best to just unplug him and let him pass away as oppose to having faith.

During that time my family prayed so hard, we believed even harder, there was nothing in our mind that doubted that he was not going to be healed.  And then he died.  Why did God do this? Why did He not hold true to His word in which he said He would heal, answer prayers, and with the faith of a mustard seed anything could happen.  We did all of that, but this innocent child still died.

God promises to never put more on us than we can bear, but what happens when you feel like He is putting more on you then you can bear?  What happens when you feel like you cannot take any more and God just keep giving you more?  How should you feel then?

Sometimes you just find yourself saying where is God and why is He not here for me. And then it gets to the point that you do not even wonder where God is and just accept the bad things that are happening.  You have tried praying about it, talking to God about it, reading the Bible, and then still nothing gets better.  So like me, I just come to accept the things I cannot change and roll with the punches even if they hurt.

I have found myself questioning God, wondering if He is my father then what type of parent would continuously hurt their child.  But true to God form He points all the people over time that has suffered for Him.

Joseph, Job, Paul, all of the disciples, and even Jesus himself.

But true to human form, I tell God I am not them.  I am not in the Bible and I do not want to suffer.  I tell God I do not understand His ways, why would He want to make someone who loves him suffer.  I could feel the direction of my life getting in the way with my relationship with God.  It would get to the point that I would actively push God’s voice out of my head.  I did not want to hear His voice, His reasoning, His rationale, I did not want to hear any of this because I felt that He was not enough anymore and life was getting the best of me.

I am sure I am the only person that has ever experienced this and everyone else out there are all picture perfect Christians.

Even though I am still in a storm so to speak, my hardship has taught me some things.

It has taught me not to worry.  Between not having enough money, food, being underpaid, and worrying about it I realized that my worry was not doing anything to help or change my situation.  And so I stopped.  And guess what, even though I don’t always have enough and still have some life problems, everything seems to be working out without me having a panic attack about everything.

It has really gotten to the point that I just to do care. Me not caring, cause me to get rid of fear.  I figure what ever is going to happen is going to happen good or bad.  I have been through worse, am going through worse, and in some weird way I think this is what God wanted me to learn.  Whenever you go through hardship after hardship and feel that things cannot get any worse, you just stop fearing what can go wrong because things are already going wrong.

And as things move from bad to worse and in each situation it somehow works out, then you build faith.   I am still trucking along and I have not gone without anything.  I do not know how. But I can attribute this to God taking care of things, even though the in the physical realm things seemed impossible.  And knowing that when things are beyond our control and God take the reigns and magically fixes everything this grows our faith.

There are somethings that I will never understand.  I do not understand why my little cousin had to die.  Or why any child has to die before their time.  I do not understand why God does not answer perfectly good prayers that are completely and totally unselfish.  I do not know why God allows really bad things to happen to really good people and I do not know why some people have to suffer more than others.

What I am told as a Christian, is the only thing we can go on is that somehow some way God is suppose to see us through, no matter how crappy things are.  Even if you are living in a cardboard box on the side of the road,you are suppose to trust God has a plan.

What people do not tell you is that the plan may not be to get you off the street.  The plan may be for you to live in a cardboard box for another 3 years. I wonder why some people are homeless for a year have a miracle and they are millionaires.  And why others are homeless all their lives, and end up murdered on the street.  The only real explanation I can have to it, is that when Adam and Even fell from Eden, the world sort of became a crappy place.  With sin, death, and violence that falls on everyone indiscriminately.


I have also learned that God loves everyone.  Sometimes I wonder why this not so nice or religious person is being blessed beyond their imagination while I am stuck in a rut, it is because God loves them just as much as He loves me.  And therefore He will bless them as He sees fit.  Sometimes even if they are not Christians.  He loves us all the same and He puts each and every one of us in places that He wants us to do His will, even if we are none believer and even if we do not know it.

Sounds kind of unfair huh?

The point I wanted to make with this post is to talk to people  who have followed God, trusted God, and done the things that God has told them to do but still experience pain, hardship, and do not understand why.  People who have cried out to God for some relief from life problems and the relief never comes.  And so then we begin to wonder, where is God?

This is my encouragement to you to still keep the faith and know that God is there for you.  You have to look beyond what you see and somehow trust that everything is going to work out according to God’s plans.  And even more so, you have know and understand that God’s plan may not be your plan, and so accepting His plan no matter what and letting go of your own is key.

I know this is not what people want to hear.  But I do not want to fool anyone into thinking that just because you are a Christian you are going to skate through life perfectly and not go through any hardships.  I do not want Christian’s to think that every prayer is going to be answered.  If you start to see God in that way, then you are going to move away from God at the first sign of hardships because you feel that God’s love equals you getting what you want.  And it does not work like that.

In case this post sounds a bit morbid, what I am convinced of is that God only sees our life on Earth as a fraction of our time.  And if we fly right, then we can live out the rest of our lives in complete and utter perfection in heaven.  So do not pay attention to the pain and hardships of this world, whatever they may be, it is not forever but only temporary.