Heartbroken....

Post Script: Sometimes pouring it out is all thats needed to be ok.

Warning: You may not want to read this blog today. It is transparently honest and asking some hard questions I am grappling with. I know God can handle it...and me.

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I am heartbroken over Sandra Cantu. I did not wear make-up today. I am in mourning.

I do not have TV, do not watch the news. I get a CNN headline delivered to my inbox about once a week, so I am pretty clueless on a lot of the news events and woeful media messages. So, I was obliviously unaware. My mom told me Sunday about Sandra, in the news, and I saw a headline of mourning in the newspaper yesterday. I have felt sad and edgy since. This morning, I had to fess up and come clean with God on what was irritating my soul:

My journal:

Abba,

I need to trust you. I want to trust you.

I don't understand why you would let that little girl get hurt. Why you allow some of the horrible things to happen.

I believe you are loving, powerful, caring, attentive...

So why would you standby and not intervene on her behalf? I don't understand that?

How can I trust with my children in the face of that?

What do I do with that?

Free will, consequences of sin...? high price for free will-

I know what happens here is temporary and fleeting- Yet it can be so horrendous and painful. Unspeakable atrocities to little children, pain and suffering without relief, more than they could bare and many die, others scarred for life in pain, grow to repeat atrocities.

Why?

Why when you could stop it, intervene, protect them, provide for them?

I see a loving side of you. I fear an indifferent, cold side. And if it is not indifference and coldness, what is it? Help me to understand.

How can I love, afraid of what you won't do, what you allow to happen?

I have no one else to trust and rely on but you--

and if you are untrustworthy, what do I do?

ABBA, what do I do??!!!!

Help me.

When my children ask me (in simple faith, incredulously)

"Why didn't God help her, protect her, save her? - What do I say? I cannot let them know what you did not do.

A thought that just popped into my head was: You did. You did help her, save her, protect her. I know in heaven with you - if that is where she is - she is safe and protected, but through horror she got there - if she got there.

God, Father -- if you don't have a dark side, and I believe you don't, (God is love) then what is this????

It cannot be a lack of prayers?

It cannot be a people who have ignored you, broken any relationship with you, who have been left to their own ways and the consequences of that fall on their children?

What is it? What do I do?

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I then read the introduction and first day of Ann Spangler's "The Tender Words of God", a thought she shared in it made me think further. She talks about how being a mother, has shown her a side of God. That she is made in his image and her maternal feelings toward her daughter are a dim reflection of God's feelings toward us. I went on to write:

I am created in your image. If this breaks my heart and deeply saddens me, what must you feel? So I know you noticed Sandra, cried with her, was even with her.

Why did you not rescue her?

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I have no answers. I have only a heartache. I know God can handle my unanswered questions. Like Peter I say, "Where else will I go, only you have the words of life?" I can sit, aching, with unanswered questions. "Though he slay me, yet will I trust him."

I cannot reconcile this. I guess I do not have to. I know God will bring me on with this and help me to trust, even it if is trust with out understanding. "Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding."

I read the verses, in Ann Spangler's book for today, and cried...all before 7 am.

The Lord longs to be gracious to you;

He rises to show you compassion.

For the Lord is a God of justice.

Blessed are all who wait on him.

O people of Zion, who live in Jerusalem, you will weep no more. How gracious he will be when you cry for help! As soon as he hears, he will answer you. Although the Lord gives you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, you teachers will be hidden no more; with your own eyes you will see them. Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, "This is the way; walk in it."