Villagersonline : blogs : clrclady : Random Angry Moments

From: clrclady
Date: Mon Feb 28 10:06:05 MST 2005
Subject: Random Angry Moments

Responses
mike: I don't know (2/28/05)
russ: A thought (2/28/05)

clrclady: Longing (2/28/05)

Patricia: maybe (3/1/05)

mike: No Subject (3/1/05)

Patricia: 2nd attempt (3/1/05)

derek: Days and Years (3/4/05)

paulmo: No Subject (3/2/05)

Karen: Famous last words (3/2/05)

Responses (sorted by date)
derek: Days and Years (3/4/05)
Karen: Famous last words (3/2/05)
paulmo: No Subject (3/2/05)
Patricia: 2nd attempt (3/1/05)
mike: No Subject (3/1/05)
Patricia: maybe (3/1/05)
clrclady: Longing (2/28/05)
russ: A thought (2/28/05)
mike: I don't know (2/28/05)

So, I have these random moments now at work (in between staffing crises, formally disciplining workers, talking about new cases of abused and neglected children, talking to angry people, and reading through court reports, mail, and psychological evaluations) were the office is dead. Like right now for instance. There is only myself and my secretary in the office and everyone is gone. These are the times when I stop to realize that I left work stuff that I need to do in my car and my fax cover sheet still has me listed as a worker instead of a supervisor. They are also the times that I have to reflect on things which has not felt the greatest in the world lately. As a supervisor, I get to just “be” a lot more often than I did as a worker. As a worker, I could fill my day to the brim with doing things, and I could judge on whether or not I was being productive enough by looking at my fellow co-workers and what they had accomplished. As a supervisor, you are just putting out fires when they come, relating to people all over the place, and just being. There is not a lot of doing. This has been my challenge over the last few months. To stop doing. I have had the challenge before and severely failed at it. But here I am being with a ton of wacky emotions which I never had before, and they are so intense I do not know what to do with them most of the time. I have been oscillating back and forth most of the time between extreme grieve and furious anger. Oh, and there has been some really intense excitement and joy moments. So being I have one of these down moments, I wanted to put out a puzzling question to everyone. I have been wrestling with God and why He sits and watches while children are severely abused. I have been wrestling not only for myself but for the children that I see at CPS. We have 14 ongoing units of CPS across the city and each unit carries about 100 families at any given time. That is a lot of damaged children. So, in my wrestling, I have been struggling with the question of Why God lets Satan have power? The war has already been won, but God still entertains these battles all over the place. I guess the real question is, Why He allows us to wound each other so severely? It is a Why don’t You stop it question. So, I put it out there for everyone to think about it and respond. It is interesting that as I have begun talking about my anger; I have noticed other people in the community being at the same place. Why does God sit by and watch as families get ripped apart, children are tortured, and we wound and attack each other?

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From: mike
Date: Mon Feb 28 10:21:35 MST 2005
Subject: I don't know

I have been wrestling with something similiar. I have been praying about it. I can give you the awnser the Lord gave me, but you are not going to like it. God very rarely interferes with free will. Adults are free to love and nurture thier children, or they are free to abuse them. It is thier choice. It breaks God's heart when adults choose the latter. And while God is a God of mercy, he is also a God of justice. Those that harm children will pay for it. In this life, or in the next, or both.
And God is a God of mercy. You and I are proof of that. We are here, we are serving God,(and we are not the only ones God has rescued) and we have a passion for the well being of children. Day by day, God is healing us.
I do not understand the timing of God's judgement, and it frustrates me also. We can pray like David did, and know our prayers are being heard.

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From: russ
Date: Mon Feb 28 10:49:59 MST 2005
Subject: A thought

I write this response with great trepidation, because I have not gone through severe abuse, like many of the Village, and so I am afraid that this will sound trite. So please forgive me if it does; I don't think this is easy, I just offer this as a direction we might think:
What about Eric's thought last night that the body of Christ is a communal manifestation of the image of God? It seems to me that in your work at CPS, God is acting to fix things (and hopefully prevent some of the things that might have otherwise happened in the future). God is working - he is working through you.
Of course, this still leaves open the question: why doesn't he excercise his supernatural power to fill in for the places where we fail? I don't have any answer for that, but given the above, this question becomes less pressing for me. I have a gut-level belief that there is a good reason why he doesn't excercise the supernatural power as often as he might. But all of the ideas I have about what that reason are end up sounding rather trite when I compare them to the suffering that might be prevented.

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From: clrclady
Date: Mon Feb 28 13:40:29 MST 2005
Subject: Longing

Thanks Russ. It is not trite, and God is manifesting Himself through the body. He is working. I can see His hand everywhere in many ways. I am in no way saying that He does not move. I just long so deeply for Jesus to come back, for the suffering to be over, for me to be out of a job, for my own healing to be complete. He has the power to do that and yet He waits. I am just a little frustrated with His time table. The whole a day like a thousand years and a thousand years like a day thing. And I have been wandering what role do we play in preparing the way for His return. That is the whole manifesting of God's in the body.

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From: Patricia
Date: Tue Mar  1 06:35:16 MST 2005
Subject: maybe

I wonder if your questions are not the passageway that lead from the innocent trust of a child to the trust that is rooted in the knowledge of the very character and goodness of the One you place your trust in?

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From: mike
Date: Tue Mar  1 14:59:36 MST 2005
Subject:

I wonder the samething cheryl does. I have just come out of my child abuse intervetion class. It is a brutal class.
I know the awnsers scripture gives, but it is hard to look at post-mortem pictures of babies,( we did that a few weeks ago)or listen to the things parents say to thier children.(like we did today) I sit in front of this computer partly to vent my feelings, and partly to try to figure out if this field is where I really belong.
I am physically weak, and my heart aches. How effective can I in the real world if I come out of a class like this?
I know where God has called me, and I know he is my strength. He has proved that to me time and again. I do not doubt him, I doubt me. I am angry at God at the moment for allowing this to go on. I am frustrated at my own reaction. I hurt because I have heard some of those things from my parents. Tonite I do my required volenteer work. Please pray for me, and especially for those kids.

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From: Patricia
Date: Tue Mar  1 16:44:11 MST 2005
Subject: 2nd attempt

Perhaps I should try to word my thought in a backward sort of fashion, because the last thing I want to do is to minimize the question or its rightfulness:
My thought was that simple faith, a childlike trust, is available to pretty much anyone. In itself this is a wonderful and valuable thing. Not everyone, however, moves beyond that, or is able to do so. To move beyond and to more fully comprehend and appreciate our Maker and Lord, there has to be some major wrestling with the incomprehensible.
I am not confronted with as vivid reminders of man's capacity for cruelty as some. Still I am faced with two choices: wrestle with that which I don't understand and appreciate in my life (past or present), or ignore what God is inviting me into and be perpetually busy with my own agenda.
Being on the busy end way to frequently, I salute you wrestlers. And I thank you for sharing your struggle as opportunities for us to pray for you as well as opportunities to learn from you.

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From: derek
Date: Thu Mar  3 23:22:49 MST 2005
Subject: Days and Years

The answer is seven. Also, God hit me pretty hard a while back on that verse you were quoting about time being relative, or whatever. After that line it basically says, "why do you whine about Jesus not coming back? We're trying to give you ample opportunity to turn away from your sin and repent, iggots." Uh, that's from the New Derek Living Translation (NDLT), in case anyone is fact checking. Anyway, I had a knot in my stomach for like a week as I sorted through that statement. The fact of the matter is that if Christ comes again today, most of the parents you work with are roasting on an open fire while bad Christmas music is piped in via tubing. God sees beauty in those people. He wants them to be redeemed. Another thing that amazed me when I learned it o so many years ago is that in Jewish law the reason you couldn't murder someone you didn't like was not because of the intrinsic value of human life, a la America, but because you didn't have the authority or right to take it away, only God was allowed. I forgot how that ties in, but it had something to do with thinking from the opposite side about our rights and values. Actually, come to think of it, it's kind of cool that God doesn't strike them dead. It means he loves them enormously, and he has hope for their lives. I don't know what that looks like for you as you watch them destroy the lives of their children. Somewhere half between weeping for them and grabbing their necks and squeezing tight, I imagine. Anyway, wasn't even gonna post anything but felt like I should throw my pennies in the mix. Look at Teen Challenge, if you come up with nothing else. We've had guys into their sixties come through, find closer intimacy with God, and, out of that, heal the wounds they created within their families. I'm interested on your thoughts, Cheryl. And now for sleep. . .

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From: paulmo
Date: Wed Mar  2 02:50:09 MST 2005
Subject:

clrclady (I don't know your real name, so forgive me), I think the exact same thing you do every time I hear about kids being abused to death, taking their parent's sin on their little bodies and souls, or the BTK killer, or genocide in Ruwanda: What kind of a monstrous God who claims to be the essence of love and is all-powerful stand by as cruelties like that are endlessly perpetuated?
And I keep coming back to this, which is the same reason I keep coming back to Christianity: Jesus. There are probably billions of unfathomable ways that God could have crafted our redemption from the grip of sin and the cycle of darkness we all live in, and if I was to choose, I probably would have chosen anything but the advent of Jesus. It seems ridiculous and muddled and slow and too pains-taking and too easily mistaken and too improbable for God to reveal himself as a man who lived the poorest and most inconsequential (as we judge it) of lives and died in humiliation and pain and largely alone with everything he stood for apparently in ruins. And look at all the trouble that Christians have themselves perpetrated/added to the world after the fact, even in their most genuine effort to follow Christ. Wasn't there a better way?
St. Paul said that the Gospel is foolish and ridiculous to the learned (greeks), and a stumbling block to the religious (jews). BUT, it is the power of God to those who believe. And, I would add, who take on the fearsome task of following in Christ's footsteps -- willing to enter into and bear and suffer with the lives of those who are suffering. I think that in some way, the depth and awesomeness of God's true desire for human beings and God's love for them could not be revealed in any other way than in that relationship through suffering -- that suffering that you and we feel for those kids, and all who suffer at the hands of others and the whims of circumstances. I don't know why he won't make it all better if he truly can. All I know is that he was willing to enter the most dark and brutal places himself to bring light and healing there and let us know that we are loved, that we are sought after, and we are not alone.
If it helps at all, even Jesus has cried out the same way you have: eloi, eloi, lama sabacthani -- my god my god, why have you forsaken me/us/the world?

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From: Karen
Date: Wed Mar  2 16:22:32 MST 2005
Subject: Famous last words

...but in this case, I don't mean that phrase sarcastically.
Thanks for your wonderful post to our friend Cheryl's post ;-) I have often thought about these particular last words, how it shows that it's OK to cry out to God with our sense of abandonment when we're getting nailed (if you'll forgive the cheesiness of the expression)... Of course the theologians love to point out that Jesus was, at that point, being spiritually "forsaken" by the Father, that the Father had to turn away from his Son. At least that's how I heard it explained to me.
But with those words, Jesus affirms that it's OK to cry out in pain... counter to Eastern philosophy, not all suffering is "illusion." There are other words he said too in that time of extreme suffering, words of physical need (I thirst), words of empathy and connection to others (John, here is your mother...) Then there's what Luke reports he said to the thief: today you'll be with me in Paradise. When Jesus is in agony, he's thinking about what's to come. He hasn't given up hope.
"Father, into your hands I commit my spirit." --His very last words, modeling what we should say/do.
This isn't an "answer" to the "why???"--but the wrestling is inevitable, and hope & crying out co-existed in Jesus, so it must be OK for it to co-exist in us, too.

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