Either God was real or he wasn’t.
There was no way around it. My own logic had backed me into a corner and demanded an answer. Did I believe the God I had grown up believing in was actually real? Did I believe the God I had spent my whole life trying to get to know and trust and “have a relationship with” was honestly more than just a fantastic imaginary friend?
I’m sure you can probably guess how this one went.
Yep, I chose to believe it was all make-believe. I chose to believe God didn’t exist. Honestly, it seemed like the easier of the two pills to swallow. If God didn’t exist, then I could just chalk things up as a really unfair blow from the universe that could never be explained. Then, I could learn to make my peace with it through yoga and meditation and lighting candles or something.
However, if I chose to believe God was real, I knew that would become a completely different fight. If God was real, that would mean I would have to deal with the fact that a God who I thought was supposed to be good and loving — a God who I was supposed to trust— could still allow such devastating disappointment into my life.
This would be a whole other cliff to scale and frankly, I just didn’t have it in me to attempt such a grueling ascent. It probably wouldn’t be worth the effort anyway. It was easier to just try to make myself believe he didn’t even exist at all. I figured maybe I would just go get a new yoga mat and maybe check into some counseling to help me work through my pain.
But most importantly, I was going to figure out how to move on with my new life as a ‘non-believer’.
But damn it, if I just couldn’t shake the fact that deep down in my soul, beneath the piles of red-hot glowing anger embers, I knew I still believed.
Like a compass always pointing to the north, something in me continued to point heavenward no matter how hard I tried to get it to do otherwise.
This frustrated me even more.
Now I wasn’t only angry at God, I was also angry at my damn compass. I didn’t want God to be real. I didn’t want to accept that truth. I wanted him to stay imaginary and make-believe. That made more sense. That was easier for me to wrap my mind around.
Because again, how could a loving God allow such crushing disappointment into my life? How could he do it?
It was a question I did not want to deal with. I wasn’t at all interested in trying to connect those dots…
However, strong and steady, my needle continued to point heavenward. Unwavering in its position, it was the one and only force which seemed bigger and stronger than even my intense anger.
How my compass wasn’t burning up in my anger inferno was completely beyond me. It was a phenomenon I couldn’t even come close to explaining.
God was real and I knew it, though it would still take me years before I would actually begin to admit it again.
But if you remember, faith is a process. And sometimes that process can not be hurried. Sometimes things have to run their course if the end result is going to be anything worth having at all.
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I sadly admit had to catch up from blog 8 to 13. I did so sitting at a worship night with my wife. So many things from these weeks are me right now. The struggle with being disappointed over and over again, to the disbelief He would let my prayers go unanswered when it’s my deepest desire, the walking away, the anger…all of it. I still question why I go to church each Sunday because when I go I often don’t pay attention after something strikes me as so absurd or I roll my eyes so hard I think the person next to me can actually hear it. Even though I go to Bible study I rarely do the study and even rarer are the times I actively participate and I never ask for prayer requests for myself because I figure why bother. I believe God exists sometimes because it’s easier for me to have someone to be angry at for letting me down while others seem to be living easy despite the things I know they do and how they act…how can it be even remotely fair! I still struggle daily, but I want to see your story. Thank you for sharing.
Phil, if I could go through and ‘like’ this line by line I would. There would be little ‘thumbs-ups’ everywhere. Because I get it. In fact, I literally laughed out loud at “or I roll my eyes so hard I think the person next to me can actually hear it.” Because I know exactly what you’re talking about! I’ve rolled my eyes so many times it’s a wonder I can even still see straight. You are in the middle of an extremely tough, grueling, nearly impossible leg of your journey. I want to validate that for you right now. What you are facing is brutal. And there is no shortcut. (How’s that for some encouragement?) If there is a shortcut, I never found it. I just had to go right through it.
Thank you so much for sharing your honest struggle here. I can’t fix anything for you, but I can listen. I won’t tell you I’ll pray for you, but I can tell you that I get you. Your story is no less real than anyone else’s. Cheers to you friend as you continue down the road less traveled. Spoiler alert: the view is much better at the end when you take this path anyway 😉 <—permission to roll your eyes at that if you want to…lol