Reflections at 4:00 am

It is 4:00 am and my mind has been darting from one thought to another since my head hit the pillow. I figure the best thing to do is get up and put the thoughts on paper. Forgive me if they are jumbled. Not any sleep going on here.I know I spent a good 4 years totally pissed at God. Things that I believed to be true were found untrue. I was busy raising 5 kids and frankly, I was exhausted. I couldn't take the time to deal with the emotions so I stuffed them inside and focused on putting one foot in front of the other. I learned not to expect things from others and to rely on myself. Once I thought I was making progress after a couple years, my Dad died in a freak accident. This brought on a whole new wave of emotions I couldn't deal with. I sought out anything that would make the pain less. I felt betrayed, I felt alone, and most off all I felt abandoned by God. He was the one who could have prevented all this and he didn't. In my mind I had done everything I was suppose to. And if God was truly a good God, shouldn't there have been some reward for that???I think the very first DLT group was when things started to turn around. There was something about being able to share and realize that I was not really alone. Yes, I was still angry, but as Priscilla always told me "It's okay to yell at God. He's big enough to handle it". I don't know why we have to go through the things we do. My mind is too small to wrap around who God is and how he works. But I do know that he put a group of friends right where I needed them to be. I will always be grateful for that. Sometimes I wish things were easier, but I also know that I've grown a lot through the hardships. No one wants to have to wait in line in order to learn patience; and yet that's kind of the way it works. We learn endurance, we learn perseverance and sometimes we just learn that we can't do it on our own and we have to give up control and let God lead. That is probably my biggest struggle. I recently read an article that stated: "We may not see the good that God is accomplishing. But we can be confident that His eternal purposes are being fulfilled through our trials." "For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison, while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal" (2 Cor. 4:17-18). We just don't see the big picture! No, life isn't fair and sometimes it really sucks. But we have to hold on to that hope. There is so much more out there for us. This life is just a little "blip" on the screen. We endure and make the best of it. Sometimes we have to hang on for dear life. But we survive.