When We Have Doubt

     It is October at last! It used to be my favorite month but for that past couple years, autumn colours and temperatures tend to come in November, so, alas, I had to change it. I'm excited for this month though. I'm excited for my birthday and the plans that I'm making accordingly. I'm excited for the weather and colours and the less physical changes. I'm praying that the new year I'm going into will be a good one. No one told me that growing up would be this hard. This isn't to say that I have a bad life but I am feeling pretty lost still. People always talk about the awkward teenage years but being a young adult is harder. At least, that's been my experience. When I graduated high school last year, it felt like I had to get my life together quickly and effectively but I didn't know what I wanted to do and where I wanted to go, I still don't. The world is much larger than I realized and there are so many possibilities. And while this is not entirely a bad thing, it doesn't make thing easy either. I'm not even going to mention what the state of the world has done to make this more stressful. 

    Sometimes I think being a Christian makes it harder to make decisions regarding my life. I'm grateful for the hope and security my faith gives me and the comfort I find in my creator but I don't know which dreams are mine and which one He wants me to follow. If faith wasn't a part of it, I'm sure it would be easier to just choose what was fun or profitable. I talk a lot about surrender and dying to yourself and as a Christian, that's what I'm trying to do, to an extent. I want my faith to be a priority because it's important and I believe that it's worth it. I want God to be first in my life but not enough to prevent things from getting in the way. And while following God doesn't mean that I can't go to college or be a writer, I want to make sure that whichever path I choose is the one I'm supposed to be on. I want my life to point back to Him and I'm not sure how to get there. In response, I've just been living day to day and hating it. If you've read my posts for the past couple weeks, that's been blatantly obvious and I'm sorry if I'm starting to sound like a broken record. I am frustrated, more than I often want to admit. I feel like I'm waiting for my life to start and trying to learn how to live it all at once. God has been pretty silent on the subject but I'm afraid to move without Him. 

    Christians talk a lot about God's plans and promises, about Him working things for good and coming through, I've done that a lot myself. However, there have been times when He hasn't, not to our eyes at least. Abortion is a big example for me. My heart breaks for the lives that are being lost so carelessly and politically, it seems to be getting worse in the States. The current government is doing everything they can to protect it, having the audacity to call it health care and a right and I have been angry. I have cried and and I have been angry. Our lives are not more important than anyone else's and that includes the unborn. Babies are such a miraculous thing, people are infinitely valuable, and yet we think we can just throw that away and for what? What do we really gain? I don't understand it. I don't know why God allowed Roe v Wade to pass in the seventies, why He's allowed this to continue, and why it even exists in the first place. I don't know why the outcry from Christians isn't as loud as I think it should be or why preachers never talk about it at the pulpit. I don't even know that this can be used for good. I don't want to doubt God's existence or goodness, they're things that I hold dearly, but I have questions and doubts. I have insecurities and emotions and I don't know what to do with them. Things have to change but I don't know how they can when I feel so helpless.

    I've become reliant on my faith, it's been there for as long as I remember, and I hate questioning the God I believe in. I look at the disciples and apostles of the new testament and I don't know how they kept to the faith. Obviously, a lot of them knew Jesus personally but Paul, arguably the most famous apostle didn't. He's the one who's always talking about surrender, dying to yourself, living for the faith. I read about everything he went through for it and I wish he talked more about his doubts and how to deal with them. Nothing seemed to shake him and I wish I could be like that. I wish I never had doubts, but alas, here we are. With that said, I still have to believe that God has a plan for everything, otherwise He wouldn't be good or He wouldn't love as much as He claims to and then it all falls apart. I still hold to the truth that He loved us enough to die for us and though I don't see that love right now, I have to believe that it still exists. And not just for my life but for the bigger things going on. Levi Lusko is a pastor in Montana and he wrote a book (which I haven't been able to find at our secondhand book shop yet in order to read it) about the death of his daughter. I listened to him talk about it in an interview and he talks about death and grief in light of being a Christian. God does allow bad things to happen, that much is obvious, and maybe it never appears to turn for good and we'll never understand but He doesn't like it either. He created this world and everything in it as good and beautiful. It was pure and perfect and human beings are the ones who allowed sin and death to enter into it. Levi Lusko says this, "how can I be mad at God when God's mad too?" This is not what the world was meant to be and all I can do is pray and have faith, even if it doesn't always make sense. I don't always want to but even if I never see or understand God's plan for something, it's better than believing that there's no one watching over us, that there is no plan, and that all this loss and pain is for nothing. 

    This is not what I was planning on writing about today but it's what's been on my heart. I always want to be honest here, even if that means confessing my own doubts. I am still upset and still praying that God makes good on His promises. He does not cease to exist just because I have doubts and He doesn't cease to be good just because bad things happen. He's angry too and that's why we have Jesus. That's what matters and what I have to hold onto when I have doubt. He can handle my anger and heartbreak better than I can. I hope that this does encourage you in some way. I don't even know that it's encouraged me but I do feel better letting it go a little. Being angry is exhausting and so is doubting but I still believe that God is who He says He is and that will have to be enough.

    For those of you interested, I got the quote from Sadie Robertson's podcast, Whoa That's Good. The episode is called Looking for More. 

Yours Truly,

Rey