Where is God?

I know I said I was going to write everyday. I mean it. I swear I did. But my husband has been home the last two days and for obvious reasons I can not blog it up when he is around. If I did you would be seeing pictures of me, my children and my home on Fox and CNN while the police scoured dumpsters for my remains.

I am in such a horrible mood. I really hate the very erratic swings. Sometimes I feel so faithful but other times I think God is dead.

My sister and her husband have been having financial problems for quite sometime. The business he works for has not been as prosperous as it was a year or two ago. He is in sales so his commissions have tanked. Consequently, they were no longer able to afford their rent and had to look for somewhere else to live. In the meantime, my brother-in-law was offered a new job but it was several counties away. I for one was very enthusiastic about the new job, because I saw it as a great opportunity. The new house they were moving to cost half of what the old house did, and my brother-in-law would be making significantly more money. I pray for my family and friends on a daily basis. And I really hoped God would do something to change their lives in a positive fashion. In my life I have gone from having money to no money more than once. People love to say money isn't everything but it is a tremendous stress when you do not have any.

Back on course....The job is not exactly as it was described. My sister and her family have now moved, making less money, now have more bills and are being sued by their previous landlord. So basically my sister has gone from plain old broke to public assistance broke over the course of 2 months. I wish there was something I could do for her, but at this point in time I don't have any extra money. I feel exponentially worse because I encouraged the move.

For reasons I can not explain, all the things I thought would be blessing have turned into curses over the last several years. Many months ago we had a video in church where a man was backpacking with his infant son and a storm came up while they were stuck in the wilderness. The baby is of course afraid and begins to cry. The father comforts him and the long and the short of it is that God is with you when you are going through difficult times, and it is in those moments that he cherishes your relationship with him the most, because he is able to carry and comfort you. I had very mixed feelings about the video, but mainly it made me angry. It would certainly be my preference to have God bonding moment in times of great joy. When people experience great turmoil over the course of many years, I wonder when is enough enough?

My sister and I were on the phone earlier and she told me a friend of hers who had been pregnant lost a set of twins. This comes only after both her mother and father recently passed away. To find out she was pregnant with twins was a such a blessing. It was as if God had replaced the two big people she had lost with two new little people. It is one of those "God works in mysterious ways" situations. But as her pregnancy progressed she found out both the children had severe developmental problems, and it was questionable that she would be able to carry the children to term. Now she has lost her parents and a set of twins. She has no other children. And so I have to ask, where is God?

For a long time I have been a firm believer that God transforms us through trials and these experiences shape who we are and allow us to become who God wants us to be. For instance, John Walsh. Would he have devoted his life to finding abducted children had his own son not been abducted and killed? Perhaps this was John's purpose in life, just as much as his son's purpose was to pass so that he could transform his father's life. We weigh the value of life in earthly terms as if it were no life at all because certain rights of passage must be experienced in order to say it was a life worth living. But what place do these things have in heaven? If you found yourself in heaven would you regret the prom you never went to? The children you never had? I doubt these earthly measures mean anything in heaven. They only mean so much to us because we have no concept of eternity.

But then there is this other side of me that asks when does it begin to turn around? It does obviously turn around for some people, but for others they are left to walk in darkness for years upon years. It seems so cruel to me. I think if I allowed my children to be in pain or to be hungry, and children's services were called to my home, I could not tell them I allowed my children to suffer so that they would come to depend on me more, or love me more, appreciate me more, hone their faith in me more. My children would be taken away. It seems like this creates a situation where God can never fail. If you life turned around, well that was God's plan. And if your life did not turn around, that was God's plan too. So when your cries fall on deaf ears, God was listening all along... or was he? Some days I just don't know.