Angry At God!
Getting real about the realities of grief
My son was diagnosed with a rare genetically transmitted terminal illness when he was just 6–1/2 months old. Only 19 children in the country were diagnosed with the same disease at that time. Only 19.
For almost a year I watched my son die inch by inch. It was the lowest, most difficult time in my life. Or so I thought.
Until he died.
At some point after my son died I became angry. It wasn’t an all of a sudden now I’m really angry sort of thing. It laid seething just under the surface for almost 6 months until it erupted into a big ball of ugliness.
I was mad at everything, the flowers for blooming (I wanted to cut their smelly little heads off), the birds for singing (well, they weren’t going to end well either).
I was angry my son had to suffer. I was mad at people for saying “dumb” things to me. I was angry for having to go through what I was. I was angry that other parents had been blessed with children but took them for granted — even complained about them to me. I was angry at people for asking me if I was “still” grieving.
I was angry for a million ever changing reasons. But, when it came down to it, I was angry I was alive and my son wasn’t. And that, most certainly, was not fair.
But deep down, when all was said and done, I was really angry at God. Since I was then and am now a Christ Follower, being mad at God was supposedly not an option for me. But it was where I found myself. I’d been brought up to believe that Christians can’t be angry at God — not shouldn’t be but can’t be.
But I was. So I stuffed that anger at God until I couldn’t any more and I finally told Him what I thought — as if He didn’t already know.
That long time coming exchange went something like this…
Me: “God, I am so angry at You. You could have saved my son. This is just so unfair, You could have saved him — you could have saved me too — from all the pain and suffering we went through but You didn’t. You didn’t!”
God: Nothing
I had a full glass of iced tea in my hand that somehow went flying and hit the living room wall, shards and sweet tea were everywhere.
With outstretched arms and my face defiantly turned to heaven I waited for that Heavenly lightning bolt to fry me. Nothing. So I yelled again. No lightning bolt.
Me: “What, are You too busy with something else to answer me?”
God: “Now that you’ve been honest we can go on to what’s next. I have much for you to do.”
And that’s the moment my intense anger towards God finally left.
I had unloaded my arsenal of anger squarely at Him and He had just loved me through it.
He just loved me through it.
Jackie Deems
copyright 2019
