Working on this blog is very difficult at times. So much hopelessness and sorrow, broken hearted people, angry people spending their lives hating others, feeding lies instead of truth, it all gets to me. It's hard to do but I do it because I remember what it feels like to be alone, frightened, afraid, but above all, feeling as if God has abandoned me.
I am back in those dark days feeling hopeless again but struggling with it.
It's easy to lose faith in God when you cannot see Him, or hear His voice, or see anything changing at all for the better. It's easy when you try hard to do the right thing but still suffer for it and find no miracles or rewards waiting for you the next day. Then the questions come running around tracking up your mind. What did I do wrong? Why did this happen to me? Where were You when I needed You? Why did God turn His back on me? How can there be a loving God when all of this is going on? The list of questions unanswered haunt us.
We keep waiting for some signs of Life up there, but we don't seem to find what we're looking for.
I've tried very hard to do the right things, work a 70 hour week without pay trying to help veterans and others heal, but my family is suffering for it. I can walk away and find a job to pay me a living wage, but again, I have to struggle with the thought of leaving so many. How can I do that now? How can I walk away when I get emails from veterans and the troops searching for help and answers? How can I walk away from people right where I was years ago while I know this is what I was intended to do? This is the work I became a Chaplain for. Some "friends" don't consider it work because I don't have a paycheck. Imagine that?
I'll get an email from a soldier with the same hopeless experience, doing the right thing and then suffering for it. Finding themselves and their families struggling to find help and reasons to hope. They have to fight the VA for claims to be approved and rated properly at the same time they have to fight their own families trying to get them to understand what is going on inside of them. They spend their days wondering what magic work will get the brain cells going so people they love will finally get it. And they struggle with their faith, wondering where God is, how He could come close to the loving God they used to think He was after what they went through was straight out of hell but He allowed it all to happen. He allowed their friends to die. He allowed a child to blown up. He allowed all the evil man is capable of and then He topped it off with a boat load of pain for them for trying to make a difference and do the right thing.
I explain as best as I can that God does not control freewill. He never did and never will. Every person on this planet is able to make their own decisions and do what they want, think like they do, follow selfish roads and yes, even start wars. The problem is when we see so much evil that we don't take the time to see the good that was there all along. The good was within them. Evil did not send compassion into that place. God did and it was living within them the entire time.
How can we keep looking for good when only bad gets in the way, the mountain of pain is crushing us and trying to push us away from all we used to know? How can we find hope when it seems to be dying everyday?
The same way we find it right here on this blog. With all the heartache I post, there are truly remarkable stories about people making a difference in this world asking nothing back for themselves other than to be able to make a difference to someone else.
Last year it was the story of Brenden Foster. I did 9 posts on him beginning around Thanksgiving up until he died.
Sunday, December 7, 2008
11 Year Old Brenden Foster Laid To Rest But His Last Wish Lives On
It's hard to believe that in one month exactly since Brenden's story was picked up by the media, he accomplished so much. November 7th was the first time I heard of Brenden when CNN picked up the story from KOMO. If you have not heard his story below are links to all the news reports on him. Brenden was dying of leukemia with not much time left according to the doctors. As his Mom, Wendy, drove back from the doctor's, Brenden saw a homeless camp and said that people should feed them. That was his dying wish. He didn't ask for anything for himself. If you want your faith in humanity restored, read this story and then go to the bottom of this post and read all the others. If you have not found reasons to believe in miracles, you will find one now.
So many stories about true living angels on this earth it's hard to forget about them. Average people, living with the same problems so many others have, but rising above it all and doing things for others. And I know God is still there.
While stories and emails about PTSD break my heart, I read stories about veterans living with their own pain but doing whatever they can to help others when they received so little when they needed it the most for themselves. And I know God is still there.
Where there is compassion, there is God.
Today He reminded me of it when my spirit calmed down watching a butterfly that just wouldn't fly away. Each of us can look at the same thing but not feel the same way. In August of 2001 before the Twin Towers fell, my daughter and I were in New York for vacation. We went to stay with my cousin and her family, ex-New Yorkers living in New Jersey. We went to Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty, the museum and made a special trip to see a butterfly collection.
Every kind of butterfly was there and many from around the world. All of them were behind class frames on the wall. Everyone else was enjoying the beauty, but I was filled with sadness. It overcame me and the tears started to flow. I had to leave. I waited outside for them to come out. My cousin was all excited about how beautiful they all were. She asked me why I was crying. I couldn't believe she didn't see what I saw. "They're all dead!" I screamed at her. I adore my cousin, but I was that upset. She asked me if I understood butterflies don't live very long. I told her I did but it was one thing to see them flying around free and alive, a totally different thing seeing thousands of them dead.
She saw the beauty but I saw only loss.
Today I saw the butterfly, flying around freely and reminding me that even in the midst of my own despair, God is still good. He's still the One deciding to use whatever means to create a creature like a butterfly with gentle beauty even if it does not live very long. He took an ugly caterpillar and turned it into something that beautiful, just as He can take our own pain, our own heartache, our own trouble and use it to do some good in this world if we use our freewill to listen.
When it seems as if prayers are not being answered, it's not because He's not listening. It's because we are not. We don't want to hear Him, do what He asks of our spirits to do, and when we don't other people suffer. When we refuse to reach out our hands to help someone in need, we are refusing help for ourselves. helping others, random acts of kindness, help our own spirit and can transform our own lives. Otherwise, we will see only the evil that man is capable of and our minds are consumed by it. If we do not see goodness and compassion in the vision of horror, it fades away. Something good and beautiful within us dies just as the butterflies in the display cases. They may have looked the same on the outside but the life within them was gone.
Trust me, if a Chaplain can suffer the same kind of doubt and troubles you do, there is nothing wrong with you but you need to change your focus and see what is still of God in the midst of what is of man. God has not forsaken you, you just forgot where to look for Him.
If you want to see the butterfly, I put it up on this blog on a below post.
O Lord my God, When I in awesome wonder,
ReplyDeleteConsider all the worlds Thy Hands have made;
I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder,
Thy power throughout the universe displayed.
Then sings my soul, My Saviour God, to Thee,
How great Thou art, How great Thou art.
Then sings my soul, My Saviour God, to Thee,
How great Thou art, How great Thou art!
When through the woods, and forest glades I wander,
And hear the birds sing sweetly in the trees.
When I look down, from lofty mountain grandeur
And see the brook, and feel the gentle breeze.
Then sings my soul, My Saviour God, to Thee,
How great Thou art, How great Thou art.
Then sings my soul, My Saviour God, to Thee,
How great Thou art, How great Thou art!
And when I think, that God, His Son not sparing;
Sent Him to die, I scarce can take it in;
That on the Cross, my burden gladly bearing,
He bled and died to take away my sin.
Then sings my soul, My Saviour God, to Thee,
How great Thou art, How great Thou art.
Then sings my soul, My Saviour God, to Thee,
How great Thou art, How great Thou art!
When Christ shall come, with shout of acclamation,
And take me home, what joy shall fill my heart.
Then I shall bow, in humble adoration,
And then proclaim: "My God, how great Thou art!"
Then sings my soul, My Saviour God, to Thee,
How great Thou art, How great Thou art.
Then sings my soul, My Saviour God, to Thee,
How great Thou art, How great Thou art!
HOW GREAT THOU ART !!! Press on Chaplian Kathie.....
Thank you so much,,,,He is great and wonderful and hears us all the time. When prayers are not answered, it is we who do not answer and not God. He tries but cannot force us to do what He asks. Then comes hopelessness. We end up blaming Him because He has all the power without once considering that He asks for doors to be opened, but people shut them in our face. He asks for a helpful hand to be delivered, but we turn around and offer a slap. He asks for a shoulder to offered to support, but we in turn kick someone down. We say "no" all the time when He is trying to get us to do something then we expect Him to say "yes" to us all the time.
ReplyDeleteI know He's trying to help me, and He has sent wonderful people into my life concerned about me. I deeply appreciate you hearing His soft voice to take the time to post that lovely hymn. It was one of my father's favorites.
The church I used to work for had a wonderful choir and usually, I was sitting in the back of the church weepy. This hymn usually made me cry enough that I had to leave and get a tissue or two.
You just made me feel the same way. Thank you again.