Replies

Thanks... It really is healing for me to hear from you guys... I think God and life and faith are much more complex than we know.... And much more complex than my friend will allow.

See, my mother was one of the most good and Godly person in my life, and she was taken from me when I was 24. She was only 58.

Even my Grandmother, also now gone, who had a child-like fascination and wonderous faith in God, didn't understand it. She lost two daughters to cancer in her lifetime, a lifetime devoted to God. "It isn't supposed to work this way. I was supposed to go first" she said.

And my friend will argue to me that illness is a punishment from God. An illness that seems to pass over a lot of really evil people who live to ripe old ages. I swear I have visions of just lashing out and choking her when she goes down that road with me.

God claimed my Mom and my Grandmother in the same year, and left behind only those who have no relationship with God for me to hold on to. That has been very hard.

Rosie... I feel for you too... and I know that these wounds for you are very fresh. I avoided your post the other day about dealing with Christmas. This Christmas and the next few will be hard. The mistake I made the first couple years was to try to recreate her Christmas. That of course failed and broke my heart, but I have come to a new way of dealing with it the last few years, and we are developing some new traditions that are ours, those who remain, and that is working.

I wish I could assure you that you will eventually heal, It has been ten years for me now... and I am only beginning to try to get it.

I just spend a lot of time trying not to dwell on things. Even with faith, we still don't understand. I definitely have moments when I want to scream at God, "Why her? WHY??" She was 54...and we had so little time to prepare. A lot of the time lately I end up putting up a mental block when it comes to things that happened any more than four months ago...acting as if this is my life as it has always been. Then reality will break through and it's horrible.

I think in a way, losing someone you're that close to is like Frodo's wound. It will never fully heal, not in this life, and at times the pain is as distinct as it was at the hour they were taken. It just hurts a little less often.

And my friend will argue to me that illness is a punishment from God.

Oh Baloney! I get so annoyed when people say things like that.

I think I've shared on here before that I'm a testicular cancer survivor. (thus the miracle of our youngest, but that's another story). But while I was going through my treatment I was introduced to another man at my church in a similar situation. We sort of got to know each other through the whole process, but were never really close.

He died about four years ago. The cancer came back and struck him elsewhere in his body. At his funeral so many people said so many wonderful things about him. There were aspects that I never knew, how incredibly intelligent he was, how deeply spiritual, how passionate for those things in which he believed.

And I'm sitting there wondering why this fantastic guy died and a total screw-up like me got to live.

I don't have an answer to that Hair. But I believe that what happened to both of us somehow fits into God's plan. A plan that we only get a little glimpse of.

Why it fits into His plan to let bad things happen to good people, I don't know. But I strongly, no more than that, violently reject the notion that God punishes His people with illness. We live in a broken world and bad things will happen.

It messes with some people's theology to say that God grieves when we grieve, that God weeps when we weep.

But I think that's exactly who He is.