I DON'T UNDERSTAND

Sometimes I really struggle with things that happen in my life and those around me. It's hard to see others suffer even more than it is to suffer myself. For a while I have went through some tough times self inflicted, mainly out of naivety, and inflicted by others. Still today, I have to endure the consequences of those tough times. I see good people suffer and it is so hard to see it happen. Sometimes, I want to scream out the injustice and broadcast to the world what the "real" story is and make them suffer as they have made me or my loved one suffer. Don't be too shocked, I'm pretty sure I am not alone in that.
  Throughout the years, I have learned that it is not my job to understand or to exact revenge, it is my job to trust. How simple that sounds. Trust means to have a firm belief in the reliability, truth, ability or strength of someone or something. Trusting someone is not that easy for me. I have put my trust in a lot of people and that didn't go so well. Before you start producing all kinds of platitudes and scripture, hear me out. As a child, we are exceptionally trusting and forgiving to a fault. We have to be taught to distrust.
 Growing up, I was a teetotaler. I did everything expected of me, plus some. I never gave my family any reason to worry. I thought I did it all "right". According to how we were taught, if you do that and follow the well laid "plan", certain things you wouldn't have to worry about. You've heard the sermons on how to protect your marriage from infidelity or the way you dress will protect you from someone taking advantage of you. I'm afraid to report that is a huge misconception. It took me a while to realize that and quit blaming myself for the events that happened in my life. Don't get me wrong, I took ownership of my mistakes but I quit blaming myself for the things that I didn't do or were responsible for. The blame that was laid at my feet for the mistakes, bitterness and desires someone else had in there life. I had to learn, if someone blamed me it was because they couldn't handle the guilt that they carried.
  When I was still a teenager, I was married. I was so young and innocent. I had two kids before I had even cut my wisdom teeth. I had said some STUPID things in my innocence. I was told because of what I wore (pants), I had sin in my life and that was why my marriage ended in the way it did. I was told that if I would have loved him more and been more spiritual, he wouldn't have made the decisions he did. Let's get some things straight, everyone is responsible for their own choices. How spiritual I was wasn't reflected in his decisions, how spiritual he was was reflected in those decision. What I wear shouldn't influence anyone in the way it was told to me. You and I may disagree but on that we should agree on just fine. Some of those people offered that advice and input that love me very much. They were people I had trusted. When i finally started voicing what was going on behind closed doors, there was an invisible line drawn in the sand that I didn't realize was there. I was on the wrong side of that line. I was the one who verbally ended the marriage. My name was the first one on the divorce papers. I do not trust easily because the ones I chose to council with and speak the truth too were the ones that turned their backs on me or shared my personal information to better their cause.
  I know, not everyone is like that. I know to not put your eyes on man but on God. Believe me, if I judged God by how others betrayed Him, I would spend my life telling others not to trust in a god like that. How do you trust Someone that has allowed you to go through all of these thought times and loss? How do you trust someone that seems so harsh? As I have told many others and have had to remind myself, forget everything you know, trust and have heard and start over. Become a blank slate. Read the Bible as if it is the first time. Take everything you read with an open mind and heart and then form your opinions. We may be saved by asking the Lord to forgive the wrong things we have done, believe that He died on the cross in order to make a way, through His blood, to for us to join Him in Heaven one day. Through His blood and our belief, we trust Him with our eternity but how much more difficult is it to ask for the every day things in life? Why is that?
 That trust to take care of things in the same way that you would. For example, I may get a babysitter for my kids and asked them to do certain things while I'm away. I know very good and well, those things may be done but they for sure won't be done the way I would have done them. I trusted her to do them, but not the way I would. What I think we get mixed up is, God wants us to succeed and have the desires of our hearts much more than even we do. Why then, would he give us just enough for a tease? Why would He give us something just to take it away again like a cruel joke? Some have said, "I would never blame God". Haven't you though? Haven't you asked, why has this happened? I have done everything you asked and yet, here I am. Why would you allow this? Here's the deal, bad things happen to good people. We may be saved, we may do the "right" things but we live with the effects of sin. Jesus was perfect. He never sinned and yet He was brutally beaten to death and hung on the cross as He was suffocating, He gave himself up to death. The people He created for fellowship with Him did the unthinkable to Him. He lived with the effects of that first sin. Can you imagine that? Committing the sin that ultimately put Jesus on the cross. We all can take the blame for that. Knowing that, I cannot feel "blameless" in what led to the demise in my marriage or even the "words of wisdom" some people shared with me. I cannot feel too pious in the injustice that has been done to me.
  What amazes me about knowing that Christ did all of that for me, and no it isn't a fairy tale, is that He knew it was going to happen and created mankind anyway. Think of it from a mom's perspective. We knew that childbirth was going to be some of the most pain we have ever experienced. We knew long before we heard our baby's first cry and watched them suckle at our breast that they would hurt us. We knew that they would disobey, lie, steal, cheat and temporarily hate us but we still anxiously awaited their arrival. How much more so did the God of the universe anticipate our arrival. How much more did he anticipate when we wake up every day to fellowship with Him? Remember how you used to watch your kids sleep in the morning and couldn't wait til they woke up because you missed them so much? I so did that! I remember when I looked at the face of my children for the first time and could see my own self in them. Can you imagine that God feels the same about us? When I say how hard it is to trust, it sounds so silly in light of all of that. How can I not trust a God such as that? I don't understand but I do trust even in the things that I struggle with almost daily that there is a greater plan that I cannot see yet. I will trust that He will make my path plain to me when I come to that point in my journey.
  Trusting someone isn't easy for me but God isn't just anyone. God is my Father that has never chosen anyone over me, loved me "as is" and only wants the best for me. Jesus put Himself out of His "comfort zone" in order to show me how much love He really had for me. He gave up His home and came to a place that He knew He would be hated and mistreated. He has never believed a word of gossip or judge me by someone else's sins. He loves me because of who I am not in spite of who I am. I may not understand but I can trust in a God like that.