Perspective

I've been battling with a demon for awhile now that I haven't been able to share with more than a couple of really close friends.

I'm going to give you the really short version:
My faith in God has been faltering.
For some time now.
Several months.
It's not been fun.

I'm trying to ride it out.  I know everyone has doubts now and then.
I've doubted before, and have bounced back, so I'm sure I will eventually.
Until then, I kinda feel like I'm in limbo.

Part of what caused this doubt is this weird...thing....I'm not sure what to call it.
I'm not sure if it's a condition,
or a personality trait that I've developed,
a blessing,
or a curse.

I used to call it a "gift of tears."
But it doesn't feel much like a gift.
It feels pretty awful actually.

Here's what it is....
It started when I was a junior in college.  I can remember the exact moment because it was such a profound experience.  Prior to this point, I would have considered myself empathetic to other's painful situations, but beyond that, I wasn't really affected by other people's pain.

One night that all changed.
I was watching TV by myself in the house I was renting.  My 3 roommates were gone for the evening.  The show I was watching was 20/20 or Dateline or something like that.  It was about girls in Africa being sold into slavery, and how the slave trade is still quite alive and well in Africa.

About halfway through the program I was so overcome with sadness and pain for these girls that I started weeping uncontrollably.  I couldn't stand, or walk, or do anything but lay on the floor convulsing in spasms of deep pain, the likes I'd never felt before.

You may not know me all that well, so you'll just have to take it from me that this was not typical behavior from me.

Since that night, I find myself often overwhelmed by the sadness of other people's pain.  People I don't know, have never met, will never meet, who are going through extraordinary pain, I find myself weeping uncontrollably for them.  I've gotten stomach cramps, coughing fits, vomiting, nausea, and have had to pull off the road several times because of this...gift?  Curse?  I don't know.

I guess it's a matter of perspective.

The thing is, it's become hard to believe in a good and loving God with all of this pain in the world.  I don't blame God for people hurting other people.  People can be idiots.  Some people are truly evil.  But, people are responsible, in the end, for their own choices.  I don't blame God for the choices of people.

It's hard not to blame God though, for the pain that is caused that no one had a choice in.
The pain of parents who long to communicate with their autistic children...
The pain of people left without homes, food, loved ones because of natural disaster...
The pain of children left without a parent because of disease.

Tonight I found out that one of my very good friends in Colorado Springs passed away last night.
She was the same age as my husband,
had two beautiful children,
and was my good friend who taught me a lot about being a teacher, a wife, a mother, and a kind-hearted woman.

I can't help but think about her son and daughter who will grow up without her, and how unfair that is.  How do you not be mad at God when something like this happens?  How do you keep believing that if He is really there, that He is truly good?

But the alternative would really suck.
If there is no God, or if there is God and He doesn't care....then there's no hope.
It would all be meaningless
and empty.

So, I'm trying really hard to just hold on to the minuscule grain of hope I have right now -
trying to remind myself that my perspective is skewed by my very human point of view -
remember that it's like I'm looking at the back side of a tapestry where all the threads are poking out and ugly and nothing really seems to make sense, but when it's turned over and looked at properly, it's beautiful and ordered and meant to be that way.

Oh please, God, let there be meaning in even this.