As my self-honest grew, I gained the confidence to tackle bigger topics of doubts that I'd held. Prayer/healing had always been a difficult concept for me to grasp. I think I found the concept of healing difficult to accept due to the sickness I'd seen my family members suffer through. As a teen, I had watched my parents pray fervently for my younger brother to be healed of diabetes, but no healing came. I always wondered why. I've never had to wonder how much my parents loved us, and I knew they would have done anything within their power to stop the needles, the pain, and the tears of a ten-year old boy coming to terms with a lifelong illness; how then could a loving, all powerful, God just sit back and do nothing? I know all too well the God's ways are higher than our ways trump card, but I found it always lacking in the face of reality.
Now, as an adult wrestling quietly with these haunting doubts and questions, I relived this scenario again in the life of my nephew. As it had done so many years before, the news that my brother’s son, my beautiful, brilliant, six year old nephew, had diabetes, shook me to the core. As any six year old, he was not prepared for the needles and the drastic change of lifestyle, and I found myself staring at him in an emergency room after a late night scare with his concerned mother by his side.
It took all I had within me to hold it together that night. It was the most heartbreaking night of my life thus far. I tried desperately to act like I wasn't completely falling apart inside. My heart was being ripped out of my chest with each tear he shed. My soul was on fire with a wide assortment feelings ranging from anger, rage, despair, and confusion. I hated this disease with a renewed passion. I was older now, I’d grown in compassion, and I loved this bright-eyed boy with every fiber of my being. This time there would be no trump card to justify his pain. This time there would be no reconciling with a loving Father who knows all and has our best interest in mind even when I couldn't see it.
I watched his parents and grandparents ache as he suffered through the first few extremely difficult months. As his father before him, he showed outstanding resilience and courage as he struggled to adjust to this new life. Knowing that my father, my brother, myself or anyone else in our family would have done anything within their human capacity to stop the suffering of our little guy, just drove this disconnect home for me. As I shifted these thoughts to a larger scale, knowing that my compassionate, earthly father would never let even his enemy go hungry made the idea of world hunger, poverty, and suffering under the watchful eye of a loving, all-knowing, all-powerful God that much more deplorable to me. I am grateful to have known what true love actually looks like, and what I continually saw from God’s corner was in no way loving in nature.
Once again, I was faced with that same dilemma. I was face to face with my doubt in a loving, caring, all-powerful God, and I knew that one of us wouldn't leave that emergency room unscathed. That night in that tiny room, I said goodbye to my idea of God once and for all. I had come to a resolution. That child laying there with tears in his eyes was proof enough for me that either God did not exist or he knowingly and willingly allowed this innocent child to suffer. Either explanation held the same outcome: In the early morning hours, I walked out of that room an ex-follower of God.
Some would instantly write me off as jaded and bitter, but some know what I'm talking about even if they can't admit it....
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