Wrestling with my thoughts

 God 

I was rasied a Christian. My family were not zealots but they had a quiet faith and we attended Church until we were old enough to decide for ourselves if we wnated to go or not. As a teenager I had stopped going. but I came back to it after I was married and had children of my own. I thought it was important to give my children that faith base the same as my parents did for me. I raised my girls in Sunday school and the Protestant United faith. But as you know,... after the hardships I have faced, I lost my faith in God and renounced his existence. 

How can there be a God? The movie star Frances Farmer from the 1930's to '50's. But what I can remember most about the biography I wrote of her was an essay she wrote as a teenager in high school called "God Dies" I don't remember the whole thing. But I do remember her talking about a hat. How she prayed to God to find her hat. Which led her to the more exestential thought of why would God help her find her hat when he allows mothers and fathers to die? I've always remembered this. And it is the reason I am so conflicted in my faith right now.

How can I believe in God when he took away my children? Would a kind and loving God do that? And in my frustration of my pain and poverty and loss of my family,... I angrily denounced my faith in him. HOW can there be a God when,... so much horror exists in this world. It's a quesion theologians have been asking themselves since the beginning of the time of Christ.

How can a loving God let bad things happen to good people? It's a question I struggle with. I have told myself there is no God. But I guess my faith is engrained so deep I just cna't let his existence go. Even though i say he is not real,... I find myself praying to him in times of despair. So I guess in my heart of hearts I still believe. I don't want to as it's easier to explain the abandonment of so many struggling. There is no God. There. Easy. But if there is,... then WHY does he allow so much despair in this world?

I will never understand and right now I am still 'upset' with him and can't bring myself to go back to Church. My faith is a constant dilema these days. I think if I had to say where I was with it, I would have to admit he exists. But I don't like how he is selective with who he seems to 'see'.

But having said that,... in times of trouble,... someone,... somewhere,... seems to step in at the fianl minute and helps. Is that God? Is that fate? is that coincidence?,....

I think I will always believe,... I have to,... because to think there is no God when I die is just too awful to think about.