I will spare you the pain of all the incidents of rage in my childhood, as a child of what I now believe were alcoholics. I will not go into detail about the bullying, the 14 different neighborhoods by age 15, the confusion of the tornado, the fire, the beatings.
I turned my life over to Christ around age 14, and joined the church, got baptized. I wanted to become a minister, but I had to drop out of school because of depression. I went to church, memorized whole chapters of the Bible, went to psychiatrists, psychologists, counselors, nothing worked. I was hospitalized for while.
I had a brief reprieve from the depression and thought that perhaps God was smiling on me, and perhaps, at age 33, I could marry and have a normal life. I was so sure that this woman was the one God had for me. She turned out to be a spending addict, and would not take care of our child.
We prayed for a healthy child. We got something else. We prayed for a diagnosis. No one could give us one. We prayed for any kind of help with him. We got none. He couldn't function in school He was bullied in the neighborhood. We prayed for his safety. He was sexually assaulted by an older boy. We prayed for him all through his teen years. He could not hold a job. He would get into terrible tantrums and physical altercations.
He finally got disability. He still could not have any dignity, and we prayed for him daily. He married a woman he met in the mental hospital. It was a horrible marriage, and she was physically violent to him, and I think he returned the favor. He is said to have a form of schizophrenia now. He is in jail for one of his temper tantrums, and his wife's guardian has changed the locks and moved his stuff out.
If I get him out of jail, he is homeless in the winter time. Every step of the way he prayed, just like I prayed as a child form the rage of my parents to stop. I can't do this any more. If a father loves his children, he HELPS THEM, he GUIDES THEM, he has a CONVERSATION WITH THEM.
If God loved me, he would help my son, and all the parents who pray for their mentally ill children would get some help for the children. If God loved my son, he would help.
If God loved his children, he would protect them. 90,000 Christians were killed for their faith in 2016. God watched and did nothing, said nothing. When my son was being sexually assaulted, God watched and said nothing, did nothing.
All my life, there has not been a correlation with prayer and receiving anything. If you get an outcome you were seeking, you say your prayer is answered, if you don't, then you make excuses like, "well we don't understand His plan."
I am finished with trusting God on a personal level. Either God is able to help, but unwilling, or he is willing but powerless to help.
Take your pick. If the former, then God is a liar and pretty much useless. If the latter, then I must learn that God is principle, not a personality. Either way, God does not involve himself in my life. He is not intervening on behalf of my son. He is not helping me at all. My whole life I have been looking to God and doing so in vain. Either God is the ultimate deadbeat dad, or God is just a principle or universal law.
I have done nothing but suffer all my life, and now I get to watch my child suffer. God watches, does nothing, says nothing. If it walks like a duck and acts like a duck, then it probably is. In this case an entity that says nothing and does nothing resembles very much an imaginary friend.
It hurts, but it is time for me to grow up and let go of childhood myths.
