When God doesn't return your calls

God is my best friend. He's my buddy, my Father, my Mother, my family, my Soul, my Life... He's everything. And right now we're not talking. Or, rather, I'm not talking to Him. I'm sure He's still trying to talk to me. Which would make it appear that the title of this blog is all wrong. But I beg to differ. While God may be trying to talk to me, He is not talking in a language that I can understand. I feel that I have been calling Him for months, wanting an answer, and He is not giving me an answer. I don't even care if the answer is "No," although a "Yes" would be much more favorable. He is just not giving me an answer at all. He is flat-out ignoring the question, and running me around on a wild goose chase. So in that sense, He is not answering my calls. And so we're not talking at the moment.

It's not a conscious decision to not talk to God. I just feel frustrated at the moment, and not willing to put everything down and go to Him. I'm tired. I'm sad. I'm angry. And while I know that God is the best decision, the best choice, the best of everything, I find it difficult to even think about Him right now.

I've never ever ever before in my life not talked to God. He's always been there for me, ever since I was 5 years old. That's the first time I remember having an independent relationship with Him, apart from going to Sunday School with my family when I was much younger. In Sunday School, it was more of a group thing, a social thing, than a relationship that I could foster and develop on my own time. And the first time I started an independent connection with Him was the single greatest day of my life. He knew I needed Him, even when I didn't, but as soon as the relationship started, I knew that it was important, and I knew that I was happy. It was like there was this friend, this "guy," that I could talk to anytime I wanted, night or day, 3pm or 3am, and He was always there. And there was a promise there, a promise that He would always take care of me and protect me and listen to me.

I DO remember being angry with God before. I was 8 or 9 years old, and I was having an especially difficult time with a person in my life. The relationship between this person and myself was starting to take its toll. The difficult times were lingering, and I was young and innocent and scared. And angry. I remember that one day, while sitting by myself, I started talking to God. Or yelling at God, but I prefer to use the verb "talking." :) "What is going on?" I said. "This is ridiculous. Why does this keep happening?" I started to cry, not tears of sadness but tears of anger. I was so angry with God. Not with the person that seemed to be causing some strife in my life, but with God. Why was He letting this happen? He was supposed to be protecting me, caring for me, acting like my best friend. Where was He? What was He thinking? Well, the tough times continued for a bit longer, but after that one outburst, I don't ever remember being angry at God again. Until now, of course.

I am so grateful to God for everything He has done for me. I'm so grateful for the gifts in my life, the blessings, the love, the joy, the happiness, the rainbows and balloons... I'm sooo grateful. And on a daily basis, I really DO feel grateful. I feel that I am so incredibly blessed, and that my cup runneth over. Many days, I feel like there's been some sort of mistake. I feel that I have won the lottery on friends, or on family, or on the number of gifts in my life, and I didn't even buy a ticket... I feel that somehow, through some oversight by an angel or by God Himself, I have been given far more than I deserve. These are the days I post ridiculously sweet, sacharin, sentimental posts on Facebook. But I can't help it. I know that I have been blessed, and I'm bursting with so much love and joy and positive energy that I can't seem to contain it. I have to express my gratitude or I will explode.

And then there's now. I AM grateful for what is in my life. The gifts, most definitely the people, the joy. But I am also pretty upset. Why? you ask. Well, I would need another 20 pages to explain why. But the intricate yet boring details of the "why" don't really matter. What matters is that I'm struggling right now and I don't feel that God is hearing me. I don't feel like God is really giving it His all... I feel like saying, "You are 'the Great I Am,' for Pete's sake. Put some effort into this!" Well, that's probably disrespectful, blasphemous, sacreligious, but there you have it.

And for the first time ever, not only are we not talking, but I'm starting to doubt that there is a God. Does he indeed exist? He's always been there for me, I know this. But I really don't feel Him right now. And I feel that a lot of things that happen, in my life and in other people's lives, are just examples of senseless suffering. What is the purpose here? What is going on? I'm really trying to sift out my thoughts, trying to figure out why things happened in my life the way they happened, and why things are happening now. I know this post must sound ridiculous without details of what's happening, but let's just focus on the overarching theme right now (Hint: It's "God"), and then I can post this post without exposing too much for the moment. I can give 1 personal story, though.

I'm pretty sensitive. I've recently been aware of how sensitive I am, through a series of recent events. One evening, I stepped on a snail. When I realized what I had done, I was crushed... almost as much as the snail (that's a joke, a play on words... nevermind). I knelt down next to him, and when I realized it was too late, I considered what I might do next. I saw his snail friend next to him, and I debated, for a good 60 seconds or so, whether I should move his friend to the side of the walkway to protect him, or whether he could figure it out on his own and I should leave him next to his friend so he could grieve. Finally I came to my senses and moved the little alive guy over. Another example: I was swimming a few days earlier, and kept seeing bees in the water. One bee seemed to still be alive, and so I scooped him out of the water and tossed him up onto the ledge of the pool. He still seemed to be struggling, so I blew a steady stream of air over his back and wings to get rid of some of the water. After a few seconds, he seemed okay and he flew away. I'm sure tons of people do things like this. I just feel that for me, I have way to much emotional capital invested in these little guys. If the bee had drowned, if someone had walked by and stepped on the snail as I was deciding what to do with him, I would have felt so guilty. I would be disproportionately affected by these things. So... here comes the tie-in with God. Knowing what kind of a person I am, as He made me, why would He place me in an abrasive, rough situation as a young child? I don't understand why God would put me in such a situation. He knows me, my soul and my heart and my tenderness and my sensitivity. He knows that I love people and animals and everything on this earth, and that I grieve over any loss, whether it's a person or an animal or a flower. It's not like the abrasive situation I was in when I was younger made me tough or insensitive or strong against these things. I'm still tender to a fault, affected by things that have nothing to do with me and nothing to do with my life.

In the book The Secret Life of Bees, there is a character named May who feels everything so strongly. She can't listen to the news anymore, she can't be in the same room if her family members are arguing with one another, she can't handle the stress or the emotional effects of experiencing anything sad or tense in her life. I feel like that sometimes; I feel like I can't handle some types of loss. Yesterday I was crying over a news story I read, about an Ethiopian couple that passed away in Dallas on Wednesday. I didn't know these people, I had no connection to them, but I couldn't stop crying. And it just seemed so unfair... This couple had just returned home from working a 16-hour shift at their restaurant, only to pass away later that night. They have this 1-year-old child who is fine, but who now doesn't have parents. This couple came from Ethiopia to America to improve their quality of life, to give their children better opportunities, a better life. As I was reading this story, I couldn't help but think, "They would have been better off if they'd stayed in Ethiopia." I don't understand stuff like this. Why did it happen? These people were working hard, they were feeding people which is a total language of love... I don't get it. And I don't understand why God would allow that to happen. There have been many instances, thousands probably, where a gun didn't go off. Where a tire blew out and the car never made it to its destination. Where a killer had a change of heart halfway to his victims' house. Why not in this instance? Why was the gun allowed to fire, the car to continue running, the suspect to stay focused on his goal?

2015: I still don't understand why things happen. But I realize that it is not from God, that He is not the creator of anything negative or bad. He is all good, and is only the cause of good.