RE-occuring question

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Hi Everyone,

I know I have posted this question probably many times in a lot of different ways, but I still am hoping to get some responses. I don’t think I will ever get enough answers to this

How do people trust God? How do people know they are doing His will. How do people hear His voice. I am hoping for stories about people went through terribles times and now see how God was there for them and they are better off. And PLEASE no stories about I prayed for acceptance and I won the lotto. Those are way too cliche for me.

I am hoping more for stories like, my loved one was sick, I prayed to God to heal them, my loved one died but this is what God did for me for which I am grateful.

Or my spouse left me but this is how I saw God’s love in the divorce process

CM

 

[maltmom]

Here’s mine.

My Mother died unexpectedly. All she wanted in life was to see something that was to happen for me a year later. I never questioned why God took her. My though was that maybe one day I’d learn why. If I didn’t I still knew there was a reason for her sudden passing. 2 months b/f my big day I discovered I had cancer. That day I knew why. There was no way I could take care of her and myself. God knew that I would have died b/c He knew I would have put her needs b/f my own. He had other plans for me.

Looking back over my life I know for a fact that if I was going to have cancer this was the perfect timing in so many ways. I was given a little over a year to grieve the loss of my Mother and to take care of myself and survive cancer. I can see God’s grace in every day of my life.

 

[Bill_7154]

Hi Everyone,
CM

Prayer WORKS for me. I don’t know I am doing his will, in my prayers I include “please help me to do your will” or "if it is according to your will’. ec. I dont here his voice.

Terrible times: I don’t want to post them again. I’ve posed about my childhood trauma, moving ot a homeless shelter to escape my family with no money, no job, no self esteem, a major metal illness (not diagnosed at the time but I could be referred to as a ‘basket case’ at the time and def had social phobia). I went to a program and learned life skills. I got a job in the homeless shelter, then another part time job. The eventually a full time job working with people with mental illnesses themselves.

In the past 4 years i’ve been hit with a cluster of major life stressors that people usually get hit with over a span of 25-30 years. I’ve had a recurrance (actually 2) of my PTSD I got from childhood- the resulting thoughts/intrusive fantasies were extreme and I won’t even mention the specifics here. As a result of an argument with my dad it triggered one (he yelled at me and normally this wouldn’t be a big deal, but since I was under tremendous stress and clinging to my job by a thread…it pushed me over the deep end. I needed to go on family medical leave. I then told him off on the phone. 2 days later he was in the hospital not able to walk. (I told him stuff like “do you realize you treat your DOG better than you treated me growing up?”) His not being able to walk is what is referred to as a conversion disorder- someone’s emotional/psychological pain is so great they can’t bear it so it manifests in some other way, in my dad’s case the inability to walk.
I went on medical leave for 5 weeks another time due to PTSD relapse as a result of the fantasies that emerged as a result of exploring childhood memories with my therapist- this resulted in, I’ll say it- fantasies of torturing and murdering child molesters and these fantasies lasted 3 or more hours per day and I LIKED having them. I’m not violent so knew I wouldn’t act on them, but they were of great concern nonetheless- I stopped the therapy but couldn’t stop the fantasies. A pandora’s box was opened. Eventually it closed again, thank God. I will not be doing anymore exploratory therapy of my childhood, I will stick with repression and deal with day to day surface issues, thanks.

And I"m greatful I can and do work. My job told meto apply for long term disability through them and they would advocate I got it. I didn’t for 2 reasons: 1 I don’t beleive in it. 2. I was too afraid to ask my doctor for a letter supporting this… and it would have only been for like 3-6 months for me to get my act together.

I went to confession for the first time in 17 years about 5 months ago. I great burden has been lifted ffrom me. I pray regularly since then and my prayers are answered (I pray for relief from pain and suffering, etc). I felt a strong connection to my priest. I got back on my medication. (I was on it when I had those fantasies, etc and take 5 different psychiatric meds).

So God and Jesus are big positive additions to my life, which is a huge struggle. Heck, I could have applied or disability 20 years ago when I first became homeless and some people were stearing me in that direction. I didn’t want that, I wanted to learn how to live and leave my abusive past behind me and learn to cope and live with it the best I could/can.

My marriage is a struggle because of my illness and because of my wife’s. She’s abusive and used to threaten to call the cops of me for no reason (as a threat, intimidation to get her way). One time she actually didthis because I wore jeans to a party rather than slacks. She kept at me at the party so I left. When home she kept calling, kept calling, threatened that if I didn’t come back to the party wearing slacks she would call the cops on me (the implication being she would make up a lie and get me arrested). The 3rd time she did this I knew it was coming so called the cops to discuss the issue and as soon as she started with the harrassment I called the cops on HER. They were reluctant to come since she didn’t hit me but I knew the law so kept reiterating I was afraid and didn’t know what she might do. She piped down immediately. Fortunately for me she told the truth to the cops when they showed up rathrer than lying on me and saying I threatened her or hit her or something. No more cop threats but she still rants. And I still have my problems that cause marriage difficulties.

But we both believe in God and both go to church and pray and it helps each of us individually and as a couple. So I know God is there and see the difference after she prays or comes home from Church and feel the positive difference after I pray and after I go to church and confession.

That’s all I got. Hope it’s enough. And I hope your not playing the game of having poeple constantly trying to convince you but never doing a good enough job. That is a disfunctional manefestation of the way a person can behave. I will pray for you. But you need to open your heart and mind and accept the possibility and realize God works in his own ways and in his own times. I could have turned my back on him simply b//c of my chldhood abuse and neglect but I didn’t. So what reason do you have that’s better than that?

 

[bzkoss236]

How is this for a story. It involves me and my fiance back when we had first started dating.

When my fiance and I first started dating, we had known each other for a number of months already. School had just started a few weeks prior to our “official” pronouncement as a couple. I really liked her, and she really liked me. Seems pretty textbook as the start of relationships go. However, after only having been “official” for two weeks, a terrible incident occurred.

One of her friends fell off the roof of an apartment building just off campus during a weeknight party. I did not know this friend personally, but she knew him pretty well. He was a really nice, fun-loving guy, raised in a Christian home. I did not expect her to get back from class to the house I lived in so early. And as she walked through the door, I could tell something was wrong. I walked up to her, and she just collapsed, crying, into my arms. I was not sure what to do, but I just followed a feeling and decided to stay with her, holding her, as she cried. After a while her tears subsided and we just sat there quietly for a while. A little while after that she started telling me stories about him which made her feel better.

Two weeks after that incident, once people were starting to make their way to classes again after this tragedy, another person died. One of my fiance’s close friends, one whom I actually got to know because her friend grew up in church with the family of the pastor of the ministry we were all apart of, and her friend had just recently started coming to the ministry events. It is still a bit of a mystery as to what happened. The most we know is that she died early on a Sunday morning in her sleep. From what we gather, it may have had something to do with an accident she had a few months prior in which she injured her head pretty bad and had a concussion. My fiance came through the doors crying again, but I had gotten the news prior, so I knew she would be on her way. We went through the sitting with each other on the couch again.

It was at about this point where we started to wonder what was going on. We prayed for guidance, for some sort of answer, for why these tragedies had happened. We were both having trouble trusting God, but we stuck with it. We just kept praying for the families and friends, and praying for her friends that had passed away that God would welcome them into His Kingdom. We were so focused on the tragedy, we didn’t see any of the positive things that were going on.

A few weeks after her last friend died, we got news from her parents that her nephew (in his teens with an abusive father and step-mother, both supposedly devout Christians) in Texas had tried to commit suicide. He was found, and taken to the hospital, where he would stay in rehab for the next few weeks. Just another tragedy to add to the list.

And just when we thought things couldn’t get worse, another friend (not as close, more of an acquaintance) passed away, but I don’t remember from what. We went to a prayer service, allowed by the school (public university), for all three students and to the funeral for her friend that I knew (the funeral for her other close friend was hours away in his hometown). For the next few weeks we just couldn’t think of anything positive. It wasn’t until a month or so later, when we started to feel back to normal, that looking back we realized what went on. We realized that these tragedies brought people together who haven’t seen each other in a long time, introduced strangers who were close with those who had passed to create new friendships, and for my fiance and I, it brought us closer together and established a trust between us, that we knew we more than just liked each other, we had a genuine love for each other. It was at that moment that I realized I wanted to marry her (though it would takes months of planning and readying before I popped the question). We also came to a peace that those who had passed were with God in Heaven. We don’t know for sure, but we just felt it. When we realized all the good that came from the tragedies, we began to see how God works in the world, and that we can trust Him. It is by this trust that has helped us get through tragedies since, like issues between my fiance and her mother (and sometimes father), and our current 8 hour separation for the next couple of months.

God has helped us through a lot; more than we had realized. And once we had realized, we really began to trust Him in helping us through future endeavors. And we will continue to put our trust in Him for whatever may come in the upcoming stages of our lives.

I hope that is the kind of story you were looking for.

 

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BZKOSS236

Yes, that is the type of story I was looking for, but I feel like there are so many things I don’t understand in it and I think I am wanting to understand.

I am not sure I will ever see the good in meeting someone at a funeral. I am not saying it is a bad thing, I am simply saying I don’t find it comforting.

Also, I think it is good that you have leanrt to trust God, I just don’t see how you did it. In my mind, I would be thinking ‘I have lost so many people who is next. And as much as God got me through all my losses, please have mercy and stop the losses.’

I guess I would rather not have hard times than trust God, which after writing it, I see how silly the statement is but nonetheless, it is honest.

The more I think about it, the more I suspect I have learnt to live with the fact that bad things have happened in my life. I yearn to be able to genuinly see the good in all of the bad. I do see some bad things that God put good into, but that does not seem like enough. I want to see the good in more, if that makes any sense

CM

 

[Bill_7154]

So, since you have been repeatedly asking this question in various forms for some time now…are you going to keep doing that indefinitely… or are you going to make leap of faith and give God and Jesus an honest try?

The reason I ask is that after a while what you are doing can be seen as what a social psychiatrist, Eric Berne, referred to the ‘game’ of ‘yes but’…

Why Don’t you… Yes, But
Played out as a person presents a problem while others present solutions — each beginning with “Why don’t you…?” followed by the objection, “Yes, but…”. The payoff is the silence or masked objection when the solution giver has exhausted their data bank of solutions. This gives the “Yes, but” player evidence that they have won by demonstrating that it is the other person who is inadequate.

I don’t know you and hope your not doing this (if you are it is unconscious). But now I’ve revealed it to you so if your doing it it is now conscious (assuming you read and reflect upon it).

More info on this topic in general you (or others) may find interesting. It’s a way to understand in debth psychoalalytic processes in laymens terms… with real life examples of common ‘games’ people play described…

Good Luck in breaking your cycle of missing out on God and Jesus,
God Bless,
Bill

 

[bzkoss236]

BZKOSS236

Yes, that is the type of story I was looking for, but I feel like there are so many things I don’t understand in it and I think I am wanting to understand.

I am not sure I will ever see the good in meeting someone at a funeral. I am not saying it is a bad thing, I am simply saying I don’t find it comforting.

Also, I think it is good that you have leanrt to trust God, I just don’t see how you did it. In my mind, I would be thinking ‘I have lost so many people who is next. And as much as God got me through all my losses, please have mercy and stop the losses.’

I guess I would rather not have hard times than trust God, which after writing it, I see how silly the statement is but nonetheless, it is honest.

The more I think about it, the more I suspect I have learnt to live with the fact that bad things have happened in my life. I yearn to be able to genuinly see the good in all of the bad. I do see some bad things that God put good into, but that does not seem like enough. I want to see the good in more, if that makes any sense

CM

It wasn’t easy to see the good, and it took time.

In meeting people, one can build new friendships, friendships which could help someone later down the road. I also find a sense of beauty in it, similar to how someone can see beauty in a severe thunderstorm. Think of 9/11 and how that tragedy brought so many people together, and even brought many people back to faith.

Also, being able to see the good things isn’t a matter of it “just happens” one day, you have to be willing to not only see it, but look for it. Instead of giving up hope. As if you were kidnapped, instead of just giving up, looking for a way out or a way to notify someone on the outside.

And the thought of ‘whose next?’ should be a motivating factor to trust God, even if you feel like you don’t have a reason to. It should be a wake up call to spend time with those you love and care about, because you never know when they will leave you. You can’t expect to just sit around and let God do all the work, you have to let God work through you too. The reason people could become friends at a funeral is by sharing experiences and making a conscious effort to be there for people, even strangers, and by putting yourself out there you can get to know them better, and with continued effort, make a lasting friendship. And the reason my fiance and I grew closer was because I felt driven to be there for her, to help her through the pain. It was a conscious effort, even if the desire to do so, or the outcome, was not. If you want to be happy through tragedy, you have to make the effort to not only search for the good, but be willing to make the good happen. To quite the Pixar movie Robots, “See a need, fill a need”.

Does that help to make things clearer?

 

[The_Bucket]

For me, it’s been pretty simple. I nearly blew up my family because of an addiction. Despite being Catholic, I never felt a closeness to God before. I thought having a personal relationship with Him was for other people; that I would just sort of know Him intellectually and worship.

I had a pretty terrible addiction that resulted in my wife and kids packing up and leaving. The night they left I slipped into a chapel and cried. I screamed. I begged God to give me some kind of peace and healing. It went on for awhile. At least an hour and a half. And then for the first time, I really felt His presence.

It’s not been a cure-all. My family is back together but there is healing to be done even months later. But I tell you this: I’ve never been more able to combat my addiction, because I quit trying to fight it. I gave it to God. I turn it over every day and I try to surrender my entire self to Him every day too. My struggles do not disappear. My feelings of devoutness and grace ebb and flow. But when I reach out to Him, I am able to find some kind of peace and I hang onto that. It’s not a feeling really. Sometimes I get that feeling of tranquility, but not always. But there is a sense of peace nevertheless that goes beyond a thought or feeling. A bit like when you’re sitting quietly in a room with your family. No one is speaking to the other because they’re all reading or something. But there’s no tension. There’s no real feeling of tranquility either, but the lack of tension is enough to let you know that everything is fine.

That’s why I trust Him. My inner torment and shame is gone. My struggles remain. My propensity for sin remains. But the constant self-hatred is gone.

 

[Cristiano]

My take is really based on feeling called and using reason. I spent all my life feeling called toward the Church in one function or another. However, because of my parents I left the Church when I was a teenager. I went to the university and I became a scientist and that made me feel like I have every right to ignore every aspect of religion because I assumed that it did not make any sense. Later in my adult life, for different reasons, I still felt this strong pull toward living my life as a member of the Catholic Church but that was obviously in contradiction with my intellectual assumptions and I could not deny it any longer. Being a little bit older, wiser, and less arrogant I decided to look at it as a true scientist would do and I realized what the limitations of my rational thinking were. I started to study what the details of what the Church teaches, her history, philosophy and theology and I realized that believing in what the Church teaches makes much more sense than rejecting it. Do I feel God in my everyday life? Sometimes I do, a lot of times I don’t but that does not mean that I do not believe in him and that I do not try to follow him at all times.

 

[midori]

I was reading a thing about Faith and Hope the other day in a 17th c work…

Faith teaches the sure way of eternal salvation, faith is the light that shines in the darkness of this mortal life and pilgrimage; it leads men securely to the possession of the fatherland to which they are way-faring, if they do not allow it to die out by infidelity and sinfulness. Faith enlivens the other virtues and serves as a nourishment of the just man and a support in his labors. Faith confounds and fills with fear the infidels and the lax Christians in their negligence; for it convinces them in this world of their sin and threatens punishment in the life to come. Faith is powerful to do all things, for nothing is impossible to the believer; faith makes all things attainable and possible. Faith illumines and ennobles teh understanding of man, since it directs him in the darkness ofhis natural ignorance, not to stray from the way, and it elevates him above himself so that he sees and understands with infallible certainty what is far above his powers and assures him of it no less than if he saw it clearly before him. He is thus freed from the gross and vile narrow-mindedness of those who will believe only what they can experience by their own limited natural powers, not considering that the soul, as long as it lives in the prison of this corruptible body, is very much circumscribed and limited in its sphere of action by the knowledge drawn from the coarse activity of the senses…

How excellent the virtue of hope is, may be learned from the fact that its ultimate object is God himself, our highest Good. Although it perceives and seeks Him as something that is absent, yet at the same time it seeks Him also as something that is attainable through the merits of Christ and through the proper activity of the one that hopes for it. The acts and operations of this virtue are regulated b the light of divine faith and by the prudent reliance on the infallible promise of the Lord.Thus hope, by means of the reasoning powers, maintains the middle road between despair and presumption, not permitting man to presume on his own powers for the attainment of eternal glory or to set aside meritorious activity on his own part, nor allowing fear or despondency to hinder Him from exerting himself toward it on account of the Lord’s promises and assurances of final success. In this security, guaranteed by divine faith in all that pertains to these things and applied in prudent and sound reasoning, man hopes without fear of being deceived and yet also without presumption.

I think the appealing thing about the first bit is that it’s a reminder as to how limited our perception of that which goes on around us-- and even that which directly involves us-- really is. And the appealing thing for me about the second bit is the second line.

 

[midori]

As far as anecdotes are concerned… I think in my personal life, I’m continually struck by how God works in my life, and pushes me on to things I wouldn’t have thought of on my own instead of just “settling”. Things happen on his timeline, never on mine… but it all comes together in the end.

One example-- when we first got married, DH was promised a job, but it fell through, and we were living off of my income working helpdesk. Things were tight-- and months passed, and we were getting to the point where we wouldn’t be able to make rent the next month if he didn’t find a job soon. Then he found a job-- and then I got laid off the next week during the dot com burst.

But the thing is, I had gotten comfortable working at my dumpy little helpdesk job, to the point where I was willing to reconsider my entire career trajectory into IT just because I was already there (for a whopping four months!), and it was safe and comfortable. But it fulfilled its need-- keeping us with food and a roof over our heads-- and when it wasn’t needed anymore, I got dumped out of that career path, because ultimately, it would have been a dead-end for me.

I ended up doing some temp work for a few weeks, and then got hired on as a secretary in the upper levels of a major municipality. With awesome benefits, including tuition reimbursement. At the same time, my husband was able to get out of that bone-wearying soul-sucking job that paid the bills and kept food on the table while I was laid off, and got into a cushy job at a university, that allowed him to go to law school at night about five minutes away from the house. And I was able to get my Master’s mostly online, also while working a full-time day job, on that tuition reimbursement plan, so we were both able to pick up advanced degrees with no debt. I graduated, but the City had a hiring freeze for the 2-year period where I couldn’t leave without a penalty, so I kept on with my ordinary work and volunteered in my field locally.

When the freeze lifted, the local market was flooded with refugees-- I had planned on staying with my municipality and letting them benefit from what had been invested, but I kept getting bypassed for Katrina refugees. I had a good shot at a few positions-- but I was already working for them for free, so why would they pay me to stay? My two years expired, and I got a job in a small city I’d only been to once before, in a part of the country I had little idea existed. My husband got a job in a small rural county nearby, and had great opportunities to get experience that he wouldn’t have had if he’d stayed in our metropolitan area. Five and a half years passed between us finding out that he didn’t have a job after all, and us moving to start our new life with a fresh new batch of opportunity ahead of us.

We’re able to do other things in a little pond that we never could have been able to do in a big pond, but all the opportunities we’ve encountered here in the time since we made that transition – that’s it’s own post.

So-- how do I see God working in my life? I see him pushing me out of my comfort zones towards better and better things, both in my worklife and my relationships (although it’s easier for me to talk about work stuff rather than relationships ). We put in a tremendous amount of work ourselves, but God was always there with opportunities at the right time. I’m happy to stay in a nowhere job in a field I don’t care about and just be average and competent… no, you don’t get to stay there. I’m happy to stay in my metropolitan area, just because it’s where I happen to be… no, there’s something better for you over here if you trust. But when you’re actually laid off, or when your pride is bruised because you’re making coffee and running copies instead of working in your field… it’s hard to understand God’s plan. But good stuff comes from it; it’s just a matter of watching it unfold, and being able to trust and work hard so that when opportunity does come your way, you’re able to take advantage of it.