what's the point?

I’ve never understood the purpose of suffering. The age old question; how can a good God allow such suffering to go on in this world. Those doubts have filled my mind and heart at times, too.

Especially when I feel sick. It’s those times that I feel truly abandoned. It’s like God has left town and is never coming back. And I find myself walking in this spiritual dessert, wondering where the heck he is. 

‘God are you up there? Then, why aren’t you making me better? I hate being sick, please take this pain away.’

In fact, today I shed a few tears thinking about some of the hard things that have come my way. It just doesn’t seem fair. 

There was one particular moment in my life when my faith was sorely tested; a moment when I was ready to be done with God for good. 

This particular excerpt from, Pools, explains why this experience was a huge turning point in my life. It describes what happened the day after I’d gone psychotic—a day when it felt as though my world was crumbling all around me and I couldn’t do a thing to stop it. 

I remember the visitors who came to see me – my husband, my mom, my aunt.  I was really embarrassed at this point, because I was beginning to come back to reality.  Bits and pieces of what had happened Sunday night (the night I was hospitalized) began to take shape in my mind.  I definitely knew that I was in a bad place, because I had done a very bad thing.  

There were a handful of people in the Crisis Center with me.  I really don’t recall having too much contact with anyone, but I do remember two people in particular.  They were both older men who seemed to be as confused as I was.   

One of the guys pulled out a Bible and started talking to me about the “code”.  He opened the page to a reference about numbers.  At that point I could have continued to sink deeper and deeper into my psychotic state.  But for some reason, in that moment, I made a conscious decision to ignore him.  I think it was God’s Spirit pointing the way out of the state I was in.  

The other guy, a dear man, had an obvious connection with God.  He didn’t talk about any codes, he just sang hymns, and talked to me a little bit about his faith. 

 At this point, my faith was being sorely tested, because now I was beginning to realize that all of the delusions I was having about God, faith, religion, were just that, delusions.   

There was a part of me, maybe most of me, that was ready to give up on faith all together.  How could God allow this horrible thing to happen to me?  How could he use religion, my faith, against me?  So when I was leaving I asked this guy whose name I don’t even know, but whose face I will never forget, to sing “Rock of Ages,” for me. 

        Rock of Ages, cleft for me,

        let me hide myself in thee;

        let the water and the blood,

        from thy wounded side which flowed,

        be of sin the double cure;

        save from wrath and make me pure. 

There were tears streaming down my face as I left the Crisis Center that day.  The words from “Rock of Ages” followed me down that long corridor leading me to a future that was so uncertain, so scary because I had no idea what it held for me.  

From that point on I made the decision to keep putting my faith in God, to keep trusting him, believing that even through this, he was going to be my “rock.”   As I began to get better, I clung to the words from that hymn.  “Rock of Ages cleft for me.  Let me hide myself in Thee.”