Bitterness

Bitterness?  How can i be struggling with bitterness just a few days after experiencing such joy & passion?  Lord knows, i must just be seriously twisted.

I "freaked" out about an expense today - Highly Stressed.  It zapped every molecule of energy within me. 

 

 But what i've really been struggling over is the coming Sunday.  Is it ok if i just stay in bed & cry all day?  I did contemplate going to the Catholic Church, where much will be said of the veneration of the Holy Mother, but much more will be said as well.  

I want to post about all this, & hardly anyone is reading either blog, but i'm afraid of the whinging & whining.  I'm tired of listening to myself feel sorry for myself.  I don't want to live a life where each year on this one day i have to hide away.  I know i'm not alone in this feeling, but it does seem the possibility that Mother's Day was created just to make some of us feel incredibly inferior & deeply depressed.  

EJ just posted that she got to hear the baby's (well she said "babies") heartbeat.  That simply crushes me.  This year it is even more clear than ever that this will NEVER come to us.  Duane is hurt & disappointed, but philosophical.  

Me?  Bitter.  Life seems to be incredibly cruel.  God seems inept.  The people who parrot about "God's perfect plan" dense.  The "promises" in the scriptures simply daft.  

 

I could go on, so much has been bouncing around in my head.  But, to what purpose?

I may feel bitter, but this bitterness has more to do with expectations than anything else.  Too many people go on about "God's perfect plan" & the promises of scripture, & having "enough faith" & so much more.  

I think they take many of those verses out of context.  However, Jesus said, "My yoke is easy & my burden is light."  I must be doing something wrong, for i don't find it to be so!

Never-the-less, what i HAVE to hang on to is that God is good.  I may not understand all of this, & i may never be satisfied about this.  But above all, i do believe that God is good.  I strain to believe that, sometimes.  I look at all the injustice, unfairness, & grievances, not just in my life but in the world in general.  Life is so often a paradox, ironic, incongruent, illogical.  It just doesn't make sense!  It just isn't fair!

 

I believe that life is just a bundle of events, circumstances, & other weird occurrences.  Some are directly related to my own choices, good & bad.  Sometimes i'm effected by the choices of others, good or bad.  Often i have no say or control over any of this.  The promise is that God will take that bundle & weave it into something which will be beautiful & glorify him.

 

I think i have it hard.  Yep.  I do.  I think many of us, most of us, all of us have things with which we struggle.  It usually feels unfair.  But God requires some give their very lives.  People go to their deaths for being Christian.  So whinging about not having the "perfect life i planned, with a wonderful career & 2.1 children" is just smack.   

 

This is what it is.  This is what we have.  

I don't believe in "God's perfect plan."  I do believe that somehow, all this mess, all the weird & bizarre things happening, all the senseless & ugly things, will come together & glorify God.  I don't understand how or why.  I don't need to.  I don't run the world.  Obviously i would not run it this way.  But God doesn't account to me.  

One of my favorite songs for a long time has been Depeche Mode's Blasphemous Rumors.  

I don't want to start any blasphemous rumors 

but i think that God has a sick sense of humor

& when i die i expect to find him laughing. 

And, frankly, this is often what life feels like. 

 

For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.      1 Corinthians 1.25

That's about all we can hold on to.  What we see of God in our world will often make no sense.  We simply have to trust.  God is good.

 

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