My husband has been dealing with a chronic, debilitating illness for over 3 years. He has an intractable (means it never stops, no matter what) headache. With the exception of a few times when invasive intervention has been successful, he has had a headache 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, for 1214 days. And for 1214 days I have been dealing with my own chronic mental, physical and spiritual affects from it.

Many times I have gone to church feeling as you described, but one particular weekend I was feeling INTENSELY as you described:

“How could I sing about a God I wasn’t consistently sure existed, a God I was angry at and felt abandoned by?”

(I felt like a hypocrite being in church when I was so angry at God I couldn’t see straight).
….

“That weekend I went to church differently than I ever had before. For the first time in my life I walked in desperate. ”
…

“I didn’t just sing along. I sang to God through tears, through anger and doubt, sometimes on my knees with my face pressed into the back of a metal folding chair. Sometimes words came out. Sometimes only groans.”

I literally snotted, groaned, cried, and moaned my way through the entire service. I shook, I bawled, I was racked with tears, ragged with pain. I have never let myself ‘go’ like that in church before … I didn’t care who saw me, I didn’t care how pitiful I looked or how ugly my swollen red eyes and tear streaked face were. I just needed God even though I didn’t want Him.

I hope you read this, I really do Shaun, because YOU were at my church that Sunday, you led the worship and gave the message. I had to go back later and get the CD because I cried through the entire service!

But I left reconnected with God … who I thought had abandoned me … only to realize He was holding me and I couldn’t see Him because I wasn’t looking for Him.

I still struggle with where God has my husband and I in my husband’s illness. I still struggle with finding myself angry at God and then guilty at how incredulous it seems that I could be angry with HIM!?!?! But I take great comfort in LIVING a James 1:2-3 life, even when my (doubts, fears, depression, depravity) circumstances steal my joy.

I sit here shivering at how He can connect two total strangers who’s ‘events’ are entirely separated by time and space with the same thread.

He love’s us, oh how He love’s us! I am currently taking great solace in the David Crowder song ‘How He Loves’. I am blown away by the recognition that my afflictions are eclipsed (surpassed) by His glory!

Peace to you Shaun! I’m off to finish reading “Beggar’s Fortune”….