Seeking Permission? Ramblings ....

"To live is Christ, to die is gain", what?  How is that?

It seems to me that death often takes me further away from God not closer.  Death throws a silence over 

my faith.  So many verses seem contradictory as they seem so unreal.  God is good? 

Can you truly say that when you have faced death, tragedy and the destruction of your world?  

Can you say that and believe it when you have a never faced the end?  

Your own mortality?

The death of someone you love?

With no one to blame, is evil the easy answer for the cause of so much pain in the world?  The violence,

the hate, the addictions, the lust, the greed, continue on unabated and good people get hurt because of it.  

But what about illness, a sickness and death with no concrete cause?  Was there a cause, an action that brought about the effect and the consequence?  What is the grand design in that if there are no coincidences?

Do I blame God?  Am I angry at God?  My life has been irrevocably altered.  I say I still believe and I 

go through the motions on the outside, but inside...do I believe?  The face I show the world is that the truth of me?  Do I truly believe what I say I believe?

What am I left with?

Total utter silence from God?  No words from beyond except for a faint whisper of  "Trust me", but faith is the evidence of things unseen, right?  Then I should have a lot of evidence.

What remains unanswered is why?  That is the question that still haunts my waking and sleeping, but no answer ever seems forthcoming. "Trust me"

Do I only have faith in the finality of that?  What is next?  The next life?  Is it there? Heaven?  Hell?

Time to give yourself permission.  Feel the fear and accept that loss and devastation may come again. "Trust me"  It all makes me tired, so very tired.

Life should not and is not meant to be lived waiting for the 'hammer to fall'.  The days and the years go by

and the hole remains.  You learn to laugh and love again.  The moments of joy you so desperately longed

for returns, but failing to be fully present and to live in that moment because of the fear.  Juxtaposing the past, present and the future. "Trust me" whispers through my mind while I feel a -

• Fear of God
• Fear of loss
• Fear of happiness
• Fear of guilt
• Fear of forgetting
• Fear of hurting
• Fear of love

"Trust me", time to give myself permission to fully live, to be happy and fully love again.  Permission to enjoy, to delight, to cherish.

"Trust me", you are permitted to love God, to accept your destiny, your life, your fate, "I have come so that they (you) may have life and have it more abundantly". 

(This was originally written in October 2008 and updated in October 2010 as I contemplated the previous seventeen years of life? ~Maleko)