Whose Blog Is It Anyway.

So many acquaintances and even friends say "You have such incredible faith. You are an inspiration." or "Your faith has so clearly sustained you. At least that has remained strong." If you are one of these, please don't be offended, but I often find myself wondering, "Whose blog have you been reading, anyway?"

I've finally come to the conclusion that you are seeing what you want to see, what you ernestly pray for, what you desperately desire - a young woman who has suffered a terrible loss, but is nonetheless being wrapped in God's comforting arms and palpable love. Reality check...no.

My faith continues to be a struggle. More of an exercise in discipline and reason than love and attraction. I stay this path because I have no choice. I cannot deny what God has done for me in the past. I can't deny that he led me out of Egypt and captivity through miraculous means (a metaphor of course). I cannot deny how he spared Dalton once before and offered us joy when we didn't deserve it. No matter how much I would prefer to discount God, to disbelieve him, my rational mind simply can't chalk up the last ten years to chance.

But then what? Like Lewis, the question then isn't whether God exists, but whether He is good. And what is worse? Believing their is no God or believing that He is evil? Random? Spiteful? Mean. Of course, that kind of talk doesn't do me much good either, because if He is those things then my feelings toward Him don't matter. And if by chance he is a loving God, then I am rejecting my only potential source of comfort.

You know what I want to do for comfort? I want to go to Vegas. Drop Iain off with the grandparents. Put the top down on the convertible. Turn up the volume. Book a room at the Hard Rock. Play really loud music. Drink. Gamble. Lay out by the pool. Embrace my singleness. Do all sorts of things that would absolutely have to "stay in Vegas." Mark my words, it will happen. It's almost a rite of passage. Then - mark my words again - I will come home to the same empty house, missing Dalton even more than I did before my trip, and be no better off.

But I'm angry, and somehow I think this would ease my anger. I'm angry at the God who did this to me. Why did you give us a glimpse of joy and then rip it out from under us? Were we not grateful enough? Did we take too much for granted? If we had been better "children" would you have let us play longer? Sure you exist, but you're mean. You made us this way and then you punsihed us for it. What kind of love is that?

Apparently it's the only one I've got.

So barring any other choices, I'll bring my thinking back around and try to see things in the eternal, to realze that this world is temporal, that ultimately once I get through with all the crap that is now, I wil have permanent joy. It's either a load of crap or the truth. If I bet crap, even if I win, there is no pay off. If I bet truth, at least there is a chance of hitting in big.