Lessons learned from yelling at God

The highlight of my day was walking circles around the floor with Jonah and Caleb... Jonah had a football and he was kicking it.  It never got off the ground, just rolled into the wall over and over.  And every time he would kick it, Caleb would let out a belly laugh as though it was the most hilarious thing he's ever seen.  He almost fell down, he laughed so hard!  In fact, after 30 minutes of this, Caleb's heart rate was so high we had to take a break.  Laughing is such a great workout.  It was good exercise for all three of us.

This week has been a very good week.  Jonah has been here since Sunday and we've had so much fun being all together.  Caleb, I am so thankful to say, has gotten better.  His heart rate and breathing rate have gone back down a little and the doctors are not concerned about him.  He even had an echo which showed that his heart function has not gotten worse.  Whew.  We really needed a string of good days, and we've had them.

Last week I was pretty ticked at God.  I realize this might surprise a few of you, who have made the (laughable) mistake of believing I don't have Crappy Attitude days.  I have lots of Crappy Attitude days and watching Caleb struggle so much last week brought out some ugliness.  It started to feel so wrong to have to watch my son, who does not understand all this, endure so much pain and fear.  And the more I thought about the wrongness of it all, the more my anger rose, until I found myself just railing against God, yelling at Him about how He needs to stop all this, stop it NOW.  Really, Lord?  You're going to allow this to go on?  What is wrong with You??  My son doesn't deserve this, my son should NOT have to go through all this pain, NO PARENT SHOULD HAVE TO WATCH THEIR CHILD SUFFER!  And God's voice, His gentle, compassionate voice, spoke to my heart..."Don't you think I understand exactly what you're experiencing? Don't you remember that I know more about watching a son suffer than you can possibly imagine? You can't see the whole picture, you only see this little part. You are so much smaller than me and you do not understand. I love you. You are my child and Caleb is my child and I see the WHOLE picture, and it is good." And in that moment, I was so thankful that I am so small but that God can see the whole story, my story, Caleb's story, from the beginning to the very end. And I was so thankful that when He had to watch His own Son suffering, He allowed it. He allowed it because He knew infinitely better than we could that sometimes suffering is necessary. I don't understand suffering. I don't understand why the world can suck so bad sometimes. But I know that even though it may make no sense to me, I know that our Creator has a different view than we do, and that His ways are trustworthy.

Lord, I don't know how You did that. I don't know how you allowed Your Son to die in order to save the world. But I'm so thankful you did. And I pray that when I am freaking out and yelling at You about all the injustice in this world, that You would quickly remind me that this world is not all there is. Remind me that there is a bigger story being written and I am just one tiny line in a really long narrative. And remind me that You cause everything to work together for the good of those who love You and are called according to Your purposes. YOUR purposes.