Answers.

The kind of answers I'm after aren't academic or intellectual. I don't live in an ivory tower and I'm not clever enough to debate philosophy with clever people. I'm perfectly happy being closer to the bottom of the staircase than the top.

Everything feels so raw again today. My dad's death was 5 months ago, life has moved on, the world has carried on turning. Today I resent it all for doing so. I'm sitting in my parent's old study typing on a computer that my dad used to sit at to work. I'm listening to the radio he used to listen to, wearing the slippers he used to wear and thinking about all the things we used to do together. There are 1000 things all around me that make me think of him and our life together.

I miss him. A lot.

I said yesterday to Amy that I had answers to the questions I've wrestled with intensely over the past few months. Questions about the goodness of God and the chaos of suffering, the silence of God and the noise of pain, unanswered prayers, why God seems to stay so distant when we need him the most. I told Amy I had answers. Do I?

In all honestly I don't think I have any more wisdom or insight now than I ever had before. I could have given a text book, carefully thought through answer then and I can now. There's still so much I don't understand, still so many questions - but that's ok.

I have come to accept the fact that I'm just ever so slightly intense and that I need to relax a bit. I think that the answers I've got now and the place I've arrived at isn't a place of new theories that makes sense of something that is quite frankly senseless. No the answers I have are answers in my soul, too deep to really articulate and not clever enough that they'd ever convince a skeptic. This is subjective.

I think that what I feel now is anger, frustration, disbelief and hurt but in the midst of it all peace and calm. My response (and my answer) is this 'my soul is well.'

This has happened and I cannot undo it and I cannot change it by ignoring it. I HATE that, but there it is and I must live with it.

My answer is this:

There is a God, he is good, and Jesus is the Lord and saviour of all who hope in him.

Life is hard, it doesn't fit into neatly packaged parcels of question-and-logical answer.

God doesn't do what I want him to do, he is not my genie nor does he do what I'd expect him to do. There is much I do not understand about him.

Before I would have thrown him out like a broken utensil for being the way he is.
Now I say 'I don't get it, but I trust you.' Simply put 'my soul is well. You have permission to go on being God, I won't be applying for the job, and I do still love you and am grateful for all of your kindnesses to me.'