Thursday, January 27, 2011

Friday's Faith - The Heresy of "The Victorious Christian Life" and Struggles from Other Grievers...





Friday's Faith

The Heresy of "The Victorious Christian Life"

and Struggles from Other Grievers...



IN THIS FOG


Sunk in this gray

depression

I cannot pray.

How can I give

expression

with no words to say?

This mass of vague

foreboding

of aching care,

love with its

overloading

short-circuits prayer.

Then in this fog

of tiredness

this nothingness, I find

a quiet, certain, knowing

that He is kind.

~Ruth Bell Graham



I started to read a book I have had for years now, "Clouds are the Dust of His Feet" by Ruth Bell Graham. It has some really lovely poems in it and the one above kind of tells it how I feel right now. Except for the part the very last line that says He is kind. I still don't get that. I still don't understand how I am supposed to just believe that Lucas dying was for some kind of good. Right, maybe there was going to be a future so sad, bad, hard whatever that it was kinder for him to go when he did. But how does that equate to a God who is so powerful that He can raise the dead, yet He decided that He would let Lucas be born, be formed by Him in the womb with this terrible disease. This poor little man never really had a chance, how does that describe a God who is kind, all powerful, loving arghhhh!!!!! Really, really is he really????


At the same time I am over asking the questions, over wondering and arguing with God. But I am amazed by how life changing this has been for me. I don't think there is one thing about me that is the same as it was before June 23 this year. My whole mind has had to readjust to a new way of believing. A new way of relating to God, to walking each day through life. There are people who have been my friends for years who I think simply do not know what to say or do anymore. I don't talk about it with them much anymore, but I don't talk about all this wonderful isn't he great God stuff anymore either and I think that says volumes to them. Like I've said before I believe He is and He was and He will be still, but I don't believe all the healing stuff anymore. I don't pray anymore expecting to get an answer, so often I just don't pray. Maybe that will change in time I don't know.


~ http://throughthevalleyoflife.blogspot.com/



*****



Have you ever taken something away from a child, and they didn't understand why? They usually sit in the corner, arms crossed, refusing to speak to you. They still love you, they still know you are there for them, but they just don't want to look at you or speak to you. That's how I feel right now.


I feel like a little child who's angry at her father... heavenly Father that is. I don't want to be, but I don't understand why I can't have my daughter. My prayer life has really been in the dumps lately. I know God loves me. I know God wants what is best for me. I know God is in control. I still love Him and trust Him. However, I miss my daughter so much that I feel like crossing my arms and ignoring Him. I don't feel this way all the time, but the winter months and holidays are taking a toll on me...


~ http://remembermaciebeth.blogspot.com/



*****



The Heresy of "The Victorious Life"

~Tommy and Angie Prince



Tommy and I are fascinated that as painful as child-loss is to grapple with spiritually, there is nothing "out there" that seems to effectively address the agony of the "abandonment" one feels from his/her Heavenly Father during such a great loss as the Loss of one's child. For whatever reason, it seems to me that I am just now getting a clearer picture of the way Tommy felt completely "dropped" by His Heavenly Father...


Being the daddy of a daughter, Tommy naturally felt the protective need to watch over his little girl. The MAIN thing he was focused on and repeatedly begging God for, with the faith of a trusting son to His Father, "PLEASE, protect her life." And then, she's killed...?



Tommy shares his journey so far...


That sense of betrayal can be just as devastating emotionally as the actual loss of her. What I've lost is that, 'I thought I could ask for something and get a modicum of a positive outcome.' It exposed my assumptive belief about God and our relationships with God. On the one hand, we are told, "If we ask for bread, would the Father give us a stone?"


On the other hand, the Bible is full of "suffering." There is not the "victorious life" that churches often tickle your ear with. Jesus said,


"In this world, you WILL have trouble, but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world."


God's presence is there in the form of comfort and grace, but He wasn't there in the form of intervention that I was asking for.


The danger -- I was led down a religious primrose path, a consumer's approach to God, and yet if you examine scripture, God's view of our relationship with Him is there in the beatitudes, first thing... - in the early chapters of Matthew, chapter 5, in the Sermon on the Mount, we get a startling first glimpse of God's truth:


Blessed are those who mourn. Blessed are the poor in spirit...


And the church just blows right by that!


The disenfrancished, down-trodden, abandoned, and abused are embraced by God.


And that message had never been heard to that point in the history of mankind. This was new. This was unheard of.


Blessed are those who mourn is not WHY the tragedy happens, but WHEN the tragedy happens and you have to suffer through it, God comes into it in a way that loves you, ministers to you, and yes, blesses you.

"In this world, you WILL have trouble, but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world." NOT YOU will overcome, NOT YOU will not experience anything bad ~ that is heresy ~ Jesus never said that; He said quite the opposite... In this world, you WILL have trouble, BUT... be of good cheer, for I have overcome the world.


I don't talk the same way to God I used to talk to Him. The relationship has totally changed now.


In a trauma book Angie and I are reading, trauma expert Richard Mollica says it well:


Feelings and actions do not spring out of us spontaneously but are based upon learned beliefs and values.... If you believe in a fair, just, and rational life, when violence strikes, (your world is thrown into shock since something is happening outside your range of expectation).

~ Richard F.Mollica, M.D. ~ Healing Invisible Wounds



Feelings don't happen in a vacuum; they have to be funneled through a belief and value system. My BELIEF about God was wrong. GOD was not wrong. But MY BELIEF about God was being betrayed. My expectation of intervention wasn't met, and therefore within the belief system in place at that time, it resulted in a Sense of Being Betrayed. Early on I was too wounded to be able to talk about it, I was too traumatized. (Even if Angie asked me to pray for her, I just froze.)


As I have been redoing my relationship with God, re-examining my belief system in light of what scripture really says, my beliefs began to change AND I let myself be ministered to BY God.


The feeling of betrayal is not there like it was.

But the process of getting there has not been pretty. It has been agonizingly painful, and it has taken a long time to get to this place emotionally.











Burned-out Forest picture, thanks to FotoSearch.com
Excerpts from blogs were found from others grieving the loss of a child on the internet:

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1 comment:

Sharon - coping with a loss said...

Dealing with the issue of who God is and how He could permit such devastating tragedy as the loss of a child is probably one of the hardest issues we parents face. We lost our adult son (22) when he went on a hike in Hawaii and disappeared. When I literally could not see how I would ever run out of tears, God gave me His perspective that forever changed my heart. We just released our book that tells our story, Aloha is Forever. So far the feedback we are getting is extremely good. We'd love to share with you and your readers the hope and encouragement God gave us in the midst of our deepest despair.

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