End of Week 2: Even Good People are Bad Sometimes

It’s been an incredibly rough—yet interesting—week. This week’s readings opened Pandora’s box and released something in me I thought was settled and resolved.

My mother is struggling with recurring breast cancer, and I have been praying for her diligently. Praying for a healing…for a miracle. My anger escaped like a genie in a bottle on Thursday morning. So many things had happened the day prior, and I kept my cool most of the day. But when I woke up Thursday morning for TAG, the second I sat with God, the floodgates were opened. I wailed in agony over my mother’s sickness that’s killing her, and demanded miracles from God, and told Him I was drawing the line in the sand. At one point—God forgive me—I took sides with the devil in agreement that God “sucked.” Yes, I said it. Out loud. With fierce anger. But that’s my relationship with God. It’s that raw and that real. I never hold back.

Here’s what I learned: When I got saved back in 1998, I was so sure of my salvation and my walk with God that I blabbed to anyone who would listen that I’d never walk away. My faith was so strong back then that I truly believe I could move mountains. However, a few years later, I surrounded myself with non-believers and was sucked back into an old lifestyle of alcohol, drugs and sex.

Since now finding my way back, I don’t make those bold statements anymore, because I know that I’d be lying to God and lying to myself. Several months ago, after praying for my mom and believing God told me she would not be cured, I got angry and told God, “Look, I can’t promise you I won’t get angry and walk away. All I can do is promise that I’ll try not to.”

And that’s a promise I can keep. Because with each new problem that arises in my life, I find myself eager to say, “Adios, God! It’s been a slice, but I’m outty!” 6:30 AM and I’m itching for a six pack of beer. Instead, I “try” to resist.

God honors my promise to try. It’s those bold, nutty, I’m-never-leaving-You promises that drive Him bonkers, because the second we do that is the second Satan challenges it, and more often than not, we end up in risky territory.

I can’t make that kind of promise to God, knowing full well I may not be able to keep it, especially when my track record shows I can’t be trusted. I’m trying…

And because of my efforts to try not to leave, God honors me. He shows me that He sees me in places before I get there, and He knows that I’m trying and I’m honoring my word to Him. So He lets me blow off steam and He allows me a day to walk away and be angry with Him. He gave me an entire day of rest. I slept for hours and hours, after years of restless sleep and months of anxiously trying to fix our financial problems. I slept…

My efforts to stay allows God to step back and let me figure it out, and I typically find myself asking for His forgiveness and for a Word. I get so hungry for Him that I could gobble up every morsel of scripture. “Pile your troubles on My shoulders,” He tells me last night. “I’ll carry your load, I’ll help you out. I never let good people topple into ruin.”

I’m glad that even when I say the ugliest things to God that He knows my heart and still considers me “good people.”