Brave Enough To Be Bliss

I saved the email, not knowing how to respond or even if I wanted to respond. God and I weren’t on good terms right at that time. “God’s love for you…feel encouraged,” I scoffed.

On Wednesday, August 8 at 12:36 a.m. I responded, saying, “Thank you so much for the kind and thoughtful message. The past year has been particularly challenging.” I went on to explain the details of what I was dealing with, said if she wanted to pray for that situation, she was welcome to and thanked her again for her kindness. I was with friends on the lake the following Saturday afternoon when Pastor Anne responded, saying, “Ginger, oh my goodness – I can’t imagine the pain in your heart. I imagine you have shed many tears. There is hope, the pain is not the end of the story so I will be praying that you have many reminders that God is carrying you and bringing about redemption through this pain. May God’s healing work be present in tangible ways every day. Please let me know if you would like to connect more or sit down for coffee sometime. I’ll keep you in my prayers.” On Friday, August 31, 2018, 11:20 PM, Ginger Bliss wrote: Thank you so much for your kind words and for your prayers. It is quite painful indeed. If you had time to chat, I would enjoy getting some help thinking through a few things that make it difficult for me, quite frankly, to pray and come to church. When I was in college, I struggled but read a book, When Bad Things Happen to Good People , and it helped me be able to accept that God doesn't make the bad things happen but is there for us when they do to help us through them. I understand logically that nothing changes because of the latest suffering, but it doesn't provide quite the comfort and peace that it did before. And people say things quite frequently about God that make me question things. Like today, one of my dearest friends who is a Christian, had been very unhappy in a new role at work. Today she received an offer to change to a different one, and I'm sure she had been praying for that in the past few weeks, so she said "God is good" at the end of her text. I can agree with that, but if she hadn't gotten the change in assignments would she have said, God is bad. I don't think so...so how can people attribute good things happening to God, but not attribute the bad things or the things that don't happen when they pray for them. And if God isn't in control of good or bad things happening, then why do people pray for God to do things other than be there no matter what happens because God doesn't control things. I've heard Pastor Adam address this and I've tried listening to the sermons about this type of topic again, but I'm just not finding what can bring me peace and allow me to pray and attend church. This is probably a lot and maybe it's too much to chat about and come to any conclusions, but it's been a year now (tomorrow exactly) so I guess I feel like I should have been able to figure this all out on my own by now, but since I haven't, I figured maybe it was time to ask for help. You reaching out seemed like the opening I needed to ask. Again, thank you for your kindness and prayers...and for letting me just unload on you. Have a wonderful holiday weekend! I saved that email to a folder of messages that I plan to follow up on later and there it sat until the Friday of Labor Day weekend, when I responded to her with the following message.

Even the lake couldn’t provide the peace or solace that it once had, but I still went and was on the boat smiling through the pain the next day when I received her reply.

On Saturday, September 1, 2018, 2:21 PM, Pastor Anne wrote: Hi Ginger,

I think your questions and struggles are completely valid and I’m sure I would be thinking those same exact thoughts if I were you. I imagine as you said, coming up on the first anniversary probably intensifies your frustrations. That’s a great self -aware insight. You are right that none of these questions probably can be solved in one coffee setting, but I wanted to see if I could connect you with one of our amazing care ministers, who is seminary trained and she uses her time providing spiritual direction. I trust her implicitly and think you’d get better care and more attention from time with her than with me, but if you’d prefer to meet with me instead, I’m definitely more than willing to do that. Please let me know your preference. I am praying for you.

I remember thinking as I read her message, “Yeah, I wouldn’t want to meet with me either.” I’m always too much. People don’t really want to know about

me. Who would? Occasionally someone thinks they do, but they quickly realize they shouldn’t have asked. No one wants to know the real me. The real me is ugly, complicated…just a lot of stuff that no one wants, including me.

8