I have found that if you yell at El Shaddai, He will yell back.

It really just.  I don’t have enough..  ANYthing. ..to express how much this just HIT us on the head.

Beautiful, beautiful movie.

I know you believe in Us.

I still believe in you.

I know you believe in me.

You just don’t believe in yourself.

You need to believe in yourself..

Silence..

Did you catch all that?

“Um, no.”

OK, lemme write it down for you..

~

Adversity reminds us that life is short, teaches us to live wisely,
and refines our character.
We must remember that this life, with all its pain, is not our final destiny.

We should not demand that God explain everything.

Pain is inevitable – Suffering is optional…

With the words above I reflect. I wrote these words way before I really knew what it meant to be in pain.. True pain. True suffering.. And suffering is optional. I choose not to suffer. And sometimes this makes me feel like I’m betraying him. My baby. My little boy. And then I do suffer. And it’s horrid. The pain is encompassing. It’s crushing. It’s debilitating.

But you keep moving. You make yourself get the fuck up. You make yourself go through one more fucking day.

And oh how close death seems. Wrapped around your neck. You just don’t realize how close you are to death. How you’re just not even going to be here tomorrow. How short life is. How long eternity is. And you don’t get to decide when you go unless you take your own life..

No.

You get up. You go on. You face what tomorrow brings and you embrace it. The hurt, the pain, the anxiety, the weight, and then finally.. the release..

And there is joy in the midst of grief. There is comfort. God is there. He’s right there hurting right along with you… He’s right there crying – catching your tears – grieving because you lost your faith in Him at the most critically inopportune time. Grieving because you had faith in him and lost it when you were crushed under the weight of your own grief.

God loses His children every single day. He loses them to sin. He loses them to eachother. To molestation.. To addiction. To their own incredibly selfish desires. He loses them because they lose their faith. He loses them because they don’t know Him and have absolutely no desire to know Him.

And it hurts. To lose your children simply because they don’t believe in you… And even worse to lose the children that do believe in you, but can’t get past their own hang-ups to follow you..

I find myself doing this alot lately. And perhaps it’s incredibly wrong. To put myself in God’s shoes.. And to be incredibly grateful that I don’t have to ever wear them. I’m glad I’m not God. I don’t presume to believe I could do a better job. Yet we all play God daily. We are made in His image and we all waste our days away trying to create and tear down our own creations… We spend our lives trying to live longer.. live deeper.. live larger.. live better.. Mainly trying to figure out why we’re alive at all..

Why are we here? Is it for the experience..? If God already knows what’s going to happen from one day to the next – why are we even here? He doesn’t need us to prove Himself right. He already knows the answers.. And we can’t handle these answers.

But we ask anyway, because that’s what we do.. We live. We question. And we even make up our own answers..

And then we pass. And still noone really knows.

Why?

Because He loves us. And He only wants for us to believe in Him and love Him. Because that is the only way He can protect us.

My faith has slipped so badly here lately.. And it’s when my faith slips that I lose that covering. I lose my grip.. I wander aimlessly.. And I crash.

And in the end I still find Him there.. Waiting paitiently as He’s always been. And I find that He loves me just as much when I believe in Him, as He does when I question Him. And when I ask why??

Just because, Aja. Just because.

  I have learned, from the book of Job, that it is okay to be mad at God.  That it is, in fact, not a sin.

I read the last entry to him.

Or, I started to anyhow…  I got to,  “He is jealous as a Husband is for His Wife. He is jealous the way a Father is of the Daughter that’s dating the memory of the boy He knows. Do you know? We were created in His image.”  and he just.. so overwhelned.  Hands up.  Time out.

Too deep.  Too personal.  Too close to home.

I apologized and let the rest of the sermon go.

His cousin bolted.  After observing, “Man, you really put a lot of thought into that..,” and apologizing,  “Man, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to start an arguement,” slipping out with the upmost of humaness.

And Chris tried to backstroke.  He’s trying to understand it all.  But.  Hands up.

And i know.  if i would just get out of the way.

maybe not so much intensity?

Why did God create man? To not be alone?  Of Course.

To glorify Him?  Did He?  Why wouldn’t we?  Why shouldn’t we?  He’s our Father.  He made us.  He loves us because we are His.  His creation.  He loved us before we were here. He loved us as a mother loves the child in her womb. And He KNEW us as a mother knows the child who’s heart will break.  And as the mother who knows her child may break the hearts of others.  And He created us anyway.

Isn’t that a little selfish?  For Him to want us to glorify Him?  Who doesn’t want to be recognized for gifts.  For the creation of a beautifully fragile work of art.  For many creations, built to strenghten His Work of Art.

How then are we supposed to be selfless?  Because we weren’t made to be just “self”.

If He is a jealous God, why is it a sin for us to be jealous?  He is jealous as a Husband is for His Wife.  He is jealous the way a Father is of the Daughter that’s dating the memory of the boy He knows.  Do you know?  We were created in His image.  We know  that jealousy.  That jealousy is not a sin.  It’s the jealousy of a loving God.  That does not want us to be jealous of what is not ours.  But to be grateful for what is already ours.  What has been given to us by Him.

If man was created in His image, then why is man imperfect? Why did He create us imperfectly? Why give us free will and flesh and then deem them sinful? Why does He judge us, if He created us this way?  He didn’t create us imperfectly.  He made us incomplete.  Only perfectly created to fit together.  Individually we are incredibly fragile.  The more we work together to become whole, the stronger we’ll be.  Each of us is a strand made of diamond.  Breakable, but sharp.  The more we break, the sharpness slips away.  This is done of our own choice(s).  Choices that knock against the next diamond strand that may have fallen away.

Why does God allow free will?  Because He is not a cosmic rapist.  My favorite answer.  I can’t remember the name of the book.  But I remember where I found it.  In the church’s book store.  During the service I wasn’t able to make it to because I couldn’t stop crying to put my frickin’ makeup on.  And I know He didn’t care about the makeup, and was glad I’d tried to come home.

To give us a choice? Well, yeah..  A choice to love.  Him and eachother.  The two greatest commandments.  “Love Me, Love Eachother.”

Why give us/allow us have choices/temptations that lead to our own and others’ demise/destruction?  We are intelligent – another gift.  And apart from Him.  Apart from eachother.  We are brilliantly self/mass-destructive.

Why not just abolish sin and temptations? Are sin and temptations necessary to free will?  Sin and temptations will be destroyed.  I don’t know. I have no idea.  Surely they aren’t necessary to free will.. 

Will we not have these choices (free will) in Heaven? Why do we have them now?  It is done.  You have the choice.  Reject or accept Him and His Family.  Sin and temptations are being and will be finally destroyed.  As for free choice, if it must be taken away, please also take with it the desire to do what You wouldn’t approve of.  Take the memory, the desire, and all of this flesh.  It ties me down.  It hurts, aches, lusts, and is just altogether incredibly inconvenient.

If He is omniscient & omnipresent, if He knows when, why, and how we’re going to succeed/fail/live/die, why create us in the first place?  See answer to first and second questions. 

Why create a person He knows is destined for Hell?  Why create/allow the creation of anyone that He already knows will disappoint Him?  He didn’t.  “For God loved the world in this way: He gave His One and Only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send His Son into the world that He might condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through Him. Anyone who believes in Him is not condemned, but anyone who does not believe is already condemned, because he has not believed in the name of the One and Only Son of God.”

I understand pieces of this.  If I sent my son to go get the rest of my children, to go tell them the truth and tell it like it is.  And they rejected us, by rejecting the Truth my child was delivering in love for them.  I made them, and guided them, myself.  And provided every opportunity and path..  And they fell away, refusing to listen to what I’d put inside of them.  He is HIM.  He is me.  Just like my children are me – a part of me.  Incomplete without me.  And I am incomplete without them, all three of my own children.  Because He MADE us this way.  Right there.  He’s there.  He didn’t make us to be alone.  He made us to be with Him.  With eachother.  All together.   All of us.  *Insert Barney song, lol. 

But I also believe He wants us ALL.  He said that.  And then He sent His Son to tell us the same damn thing.

How do we know if we’re predestined for Heaven or Hell?  He didn’t make Hell for us.

Why create Hell if He is loving and forgiving? How does the creation of Hell fit in with scriptures that say He is loving/forgiving?  Hell is for sin and temptation.  And for those who can’t stand/accept letting them go.

Why didn’t He come Himself to be crucified? Why would He send His Son? How can His Son be Him at the same time? It wasn’t Jesus’ will to die. - ”Not my will, but Yours be done.”  Jesus felt the pull of His flesh, the desperation of all the sin that was about to fall on Him.  He sweat blood, because His flesh was about to bear every sin, every rape, every neglection of lost parents that had never been shown or accepted His Truth, the genocides, the heart-wrenching loss of so many children.  His children…  He felt the separation from His Father at the cross, until He let go of His own flesh..  So that we would understand how completely we would be separated, if we chose to honor our flesh instead of Him.

Maybe?  I don’t know.  But it feels right.  And wrong.  And heartbreaking.  And I still wonder..  Will I always be a mess in this flesh?