Ok, Here's A Tough One

[Catholictothecore]

Ok

I've been putting this off for a long time, but I just don't know where else to turn right now. It should also be noted that I am posting in a very bad mood and on very little sleep.

I am extremely bitter towards God. There is sooo much in my life that I feel is wrong, and that I can do nothing about. Like the fact that my heart aches due to past relationships. I wonder what they would be like had they gone other ways, even though I am married to a woman who is all I could ask for and more. Like the fact that I have been an addict that never wanted to be in the first place, and was just a dumb kid who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. That I have been abused, and in trying to just...let others know how I feel, find myself abusing them as well. I never wanted to, but I am not wholly in control of the situation.

God is the only one who saw each and every one of these things coming. He is the one who has allowed me to live in nearly constant pain for the past ten years. I am very, very, VERY mad at him. I don't want to be. I want to heal. But I also want things to be different. I want to smile, not because I want people to think I'm happy, but because I am happy. I want to believe because I actually do believe, not because I'm scared of what may happen if I don't.

Pham I fear that hope is something so foreign to me, I can't remember what it feels like. I feel like a black hole of darkness. And I'm scared, because I can't possibly escape what is eating me alive from within. Why did God do this? I know you can't answer that, so...what can I do? I am so lost.

Thank you, all

Alex

Edited March 25, 2011 by Catholictothecore

[MIKolbe]

moved to TL...

[organwerke]

I think I've not many answers to give... probably your actual situation does not change with pure will, so I am sure that the best thing I can do is to pray for you, and the only advice I can give you, besides praying, is: don't be afraid to ask help from others.
God does not show his mercy for us only through prayer, but also through the people he puts in our life. You have now a wonderful wife, and this is a special gift from God for you.
I am sure you have also good friends.
Don't be ashamed to ask them to help you, if they can do anything for you to show that God still loves you, also through them.
God bless you.

[Archaeology cat]

I really don't have advice, except perhaps to say to pour all this out before Jesus in the Eucharist. I'll say a prayer for you.

[Era Might]

For me poetry usually has the answers to life's problems. Perhaps the only answer that poetry gives is that you're not alone. So I offer you this poem:

[quote]NOT, I’ll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee;
Not untwist—slack they may be—these last strands of man
In me ór, most weary, cry I can no more. I can;
Can something, hope, wish day come, not choose not to be.
But ah, but O thou terrible, why wouldst thou rude on me
Thy wring-world right foot rock? lay a lionlimb against me? scan
With darksome devouring eyes my bruisèd bones? and fan,
O in turns of tempest, me heaped there; me frantic to avoid thee and flee?

Why? That my chaff might fly; my grain lie, sheer and clear.
Nay in all that toil, that coil, since (seems) I kissed the rod,
Hand rather, my heart lo! lapped strength, stole joy, would laugh, chéer.
Cheer whom though? the hero whose heaven-handling flung me, fóot tród
Me? or me that fought him? O which one? is it each one? That night, that year
Of now done darkness I wretch lay wrestling with (my God!) my God.

--"Carrion Comfort" by Gerard Manley Hopkins[/quote]

Edited March 26, 2011 by Era Might

[Catholictothecore]

Thank you, all. Your prayers mean more to me than I can imagine. I've been...holding on to a lot for a long time. And while I don't know that I've...let go, I'm not holding...perhaps as tightly as I normally do. The Spiritual Desert is just a really sucky place to be.

Thanks for the poem.

Alex

[CatherineM]

My first thought when I think about the bad things that have happened to me, and that God knew they were going to happen, is that God is a typical parent. I knew without a doubt the holes my boys were going to fall in. I had to let them. If I had saved them from the holes, they wouldn't have learned how to walk around them. They wouldn't have learned how to climb out of the hole either. Parents always know what their kids are going to do. Doesn't mean we can or should protect them from all of it.

Losing hope is something I can definitely relate to. When I get hurt, all I can think is that I will be in pain forever. That I will never walk right again. That this is the "one" that will put me down permanently. Sometimes, I have to take it a minute at a time. That's where I'm at right now.

[JenDeMaria]

Here's another thought -- somewhere out there is a person who's never had anything go seriously wrong in his whole life. Maybe he has a fair amount of money, a great looking wife, a couple of kids, a nice house, a sweet job and some great stuff. One day he's going to die and go to Heaven and stand in judgement: perhaps he'll be surprised that there is a God or a God that actually expected something more of him than not committing the kinds of atrocities that land you in front of an international war crimes tribunal. And he'll say "But God, why didn't you wake me up?" and maybe God will say "I gave you everything you wanted. Deep down you knew you were hungry for something more, but you never looked into it, you never asked the right questions, you didn't even bother. I put enough of the right people into your life to give you the opportunity to follow the truth all the way home to me and you didn't even start down that road. I, of course, know everything, including the ultimate decisions of your heart. I knew that you would never choose to look my way and so I gave you a very nice, very comfortable life -- right up until the point where you threw away the only thing that ever mattered. I gave you the choice between life and death and you chose death. Now depart from me, I never knew you."

Think of Didache and Lazarus. Lazarus had a horrible life -- he lived on a street as a crippled beggar who was so hungry he would have been happy to have eaten crumbs off the floor. Wild dogs came and licked at his open sores. But in the end, when he died, he went straight to Heaven, while Didache, the rich man who had everything, went to Hell. Lazarus had enough going wrong in his life to help him realize that there is more to life than food, amusement and fleeting pleasure. He also accepted all the horrible things that happened in his life and they counted as penance in his favor. When Lazarus realized what had happened he asked if someone, anyone, would go warn his family so that they would not end up in Hades also... and was told, rather ominously, that his family would not be converted "even if someone were to rise from the dead."

Or think of the Prodigal son, who had to be reduced to dire poverty, desiring to feast on a handful of corn husks that were meant to be food for swine, before he realized how much better he would have had it if he'd never left home -- and that, in fact, it would be better to be a servant in his father's house than to live like he was. Yet, this is not a though that would have been possible while he was living riotously and squandering his father's fortune on prostitutes.

I'd like to say more but have to run off to adoration right now. I will pray for you while I'm with Christ in the Eucharist.

[Amy G.]

If you can get a hold of this book - [u]Spiritual Childhood[/u] by Msgr. Vernon Johnson - it is [i]excellent[/i]. It has three chapters dedicated to the topic of suffering. Reading this really helped me... It also helped my Mom to deal with some very tough stuff she went through. Msgr. Johnson explains Saint Therese of Lisieux's understanding of the immense value of suffering - of suffering as a precious gift that united her to God in the deepest way. He also explains how she offered her sufferings. It is really worth reading! I highly [i]highly[/i] recommend it. I hope you are able to read it! By the way, your avatar speaks volumes about uniting our sufferings to those of Christ on the cross. It's beautiful! Be assured of my prayers.

[Catholictothecore]

Thank you, all. Today is a bit better. God is just...He knows more than we do. I realize that there are some things I just need to get over that I've never wanted to. Pretty much all my life, if I wanted something, somehow or another, I got it. So, when I had this perfect life evisioned for myself, exactly what I wanted to for myself and for God, and he said no...it...yeah.

Thank you all. I do not understand God. But we can work with that. Honestly, it feels great just to have this off my chest.

[Fr. Antony Maria OSB]

Hey Alex,

First off, thanks for opening up and seeking some help: as our brother in Christ, your pain is our pain, but you seeking help gives you, and through you us, hope. I don't know that a long philosophical discourse on the merits of suffering and pain will necessarily be beneficial here, but I will say this: when I am going through difficult times (which do not seem to be much in comparison with yours), one of the things I pray is, "Make me weak, Oh Lord, that You may be my Strength." Keep that in mind. When we are in our weakest moments, and we feel as though there is no hope and we cannot carry on, Christ is there to help us carry our burdens. Let Him be your Simon of Cyrene. Now, practically speaking, how can you go about doing this? One thing that I really admired about my Dad when he tore a ligament in his shoulder was that when he would wake up each morning he would tell himself, "Today is going to be a good day," or, "Today is going to be better than yesterday," and he would bring that attitude with him wherever he went. Your days might smell of elderberries right now, but when you wake up in the morning you could just say to yourself, "Today is going to be better than yesterday." It doesn't necessarily mean it will be a great day, but as each day progresses and you tell yourself that each day is going to be better than the one before, and bring an optimistic attitude with you, it may help. Also, reach out for help to those around you. You said that you have a beautiful wife: talk with her about these things. Is there a parish priest or a priest you know with whom you can talk these things over? Friends or family? Reaching out on the internet is a great first step, but ultimately I think you'll find that face to face interactions with people have an even more positive impact. Finally, get outside of yourself. Try giving back to the community through service of some kind if you have the time. Maybe go once a week to the local food pantry to help sort food and serve the homeless, if there's a habitat for humanity section near you volunteer with them helping to rebuild houses (or knock down old ones!), anything to get your hands busy and get you out helping other people. Bring friends along with you if you can and make a fun day out of it.

Most importantly, though, pray. The power of prayer does not come from us influencing what God does in our lives. No, the power of prayer comes, from the grace of God, from us opening ourselves to receiving that which God wills for our lives. Through prayer we do not change the heart of God, but instead God changes ours. Know that I'll be praying for you, Alex, and I hope things get better for you soon. In the words of a Third Day song, remember, "There's a light at the end of this tunnel for you!"

May God bless and protect you always in all of your endeavors!

Your Brother in Christ,

Joe

[Lil Red]

I don't know if you have a copy of this month's Magnificat, but I found today's reflection very helpful for me, and I hope it will be helpful for you:

[quote]If I were to give a human reason for my fidelity to Christ in this evening of my life, I would call it his quieting of the radical anguish that is in me....

Christ is not a defense which I have erected against anguish; on the contrary, anguish was a permanent state during the days of my stormy youth when I did not have recourse to him, when I dealt apart from him. No, my anguish did not create God. The quieting I now experience, the silence that falls upon my last days, permits me finally to be attentive to the answer which was unceasingly given during my tormented life, but to which I preferred my suffering because I preferred my sin. What more do I know today than I did as a despairing adolescent? The adolescent loves neither happiness nor peace. It took me a long time to learn to love God. I can say nothing on this subject that is not part of my life: as an adolescent I loved my anguish and I preferred it to God. Far from inciting me to imagine a God to deliver me, my anguish provided me with reasons and excuses to escape the presence, in me and about me, of a love to which I preferred an unhappiness born of covetousness.

It is not anguish which creates the Father in heaven whom Christ taught us to know and to love. It was rather my anguish, the somber delectation that lasted throughout my interminable youth - I say interminable because my heart remains young even though I am not - it was this delectation in anguish that inclined me to turn away from God and even deny that he existed. It furnished me with arguments and proofs against his goodness, against his love...

"If you did know the gift of God," Christ said to the Samaritan woman. And what is the gift of God? It is precisely the opposite of anguish.

--Francois Mauriac[/quote]

[Papist]

double post

Edited March 28, 2011 by Papist

[Papist]

Our suffering unites us with Christ.

Here's an article I think will help you.

[url="http://www.peterkreeft.com/topics/suffering.htm"][color="#606420"]http://www.peterkreeft.com/topics/suffering.htm[/color][/url]

Here's some audio downloads I think will help you.

[url="http://www.peterkreeft.com/audio/17_cslewis-a-grief-observed.htm"][color="#606420"]http://www.peterkreeft.com/audio/17_cslewis-a-grief-observed.htm[/color][/url] - C.S. Lewis's personal and honest account of the loss of his wife, and how God deepened his love
[url="http://www.peterkreeft.com/audio/26_dark-side.htm"][color="#606420"]http://www.peterkreeft.com/audio/26_dark-side.htm[/color][/url] - Shining light on three kinds of evil: suffering, death and sin
[url="http://www.peterkreeft.com/audio/07_suffering.htm"][color="#606420"]http://www.peterkreeft.com/audio/07_suffering.htm[/color][/url] - Tackles questions related to the nature of suffering, evil and sin

Here is the book, Making Sense Out Of Suffering. [url="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0892832193/theofficiapet-20"][color="#606420"]http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0892832193/theofficiapet-20[/color][/url]

Edited March 28, 2011 by Papist

[Santa Cruz]

Know that you and your wife are in my prayers. Personally, I find praying the psalms to be very helpful during difficult times. They give voice to much that is within my own heart and also the consolation of knowing that it is not my heart alone experiencing this but throughout salvation history people have been going through similar circumstances. Ultimately, the psalms help me to keep God as the center of the difficulty, to remain in conversation with Him through whatever I am struggling with. Oh, and the Cross, praying the Stations or meditating upon the Passion of Christ keeps me focused on the greater purpose of it all, for in Christ, nothing is lost or wasted. Surely too, God has put us here to be in communion with others as we journey to our eternal home in Heaven and so it is important to turn to others and like someone else mentioned, face to face encounters are best in these matters.

Here is a song.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCsZiFYVhqc&feature=related