In Bolivia I realized I was mad at God.
In Peru I realized God had forgiven me for being mad at him.
And in Ecuador I realized the reason I was so mad is because I’d come to believe that he’d forgotten me.
On an otherwise perfectly happy Sunday, I found out some horrible news from home and shut down for the next week.
A few days later I asked for a small but super important favor from one of my teammates and she forgot about it.
That night in feedback, she apologized for forgetting, because she’s a wonderful person who obviously didn’t forget on purpose. And because I’m far less wonderful and had been feeling like a brat since Sunday and wanted to hurt her, I sarcastically replied, “It’s okay, everyone forgets me. That’s just life.”
Feedback continued with me yelling at Justin and ended with me crying in Sarah’s arms while everyone watched.
It was fairly awful.
I laid in bed that night and asked myself, what the heck is wrong with me? None of this should be a big deal. What’s the bigger deal that’s making these little deals seem so big?
The next day I sat down with God to figure it out. When I’m confused about my thoughts, I usually understand them as soon as I have a pen in my hand. So this is what ended up in my journal. (And for clarification, the Daniel I’m referring to is my friend that died in May, not my brother)
I need to figure out this forgotten little martyr attitude I’ve had for a week.
Obviously my first thought is that it’s true. Not one of my friends has contacted me since I left two and a half months ago, I’ve gotten zero donations since July 26th, my teammates STILL have to ask what they can do to love me when they should just know what I need by now…that sounds like the definition of “forgotten” to me.
But even that doesn’t sound like the real issue.
I can say all day that “At least God never forgets me,” but that hasn’t been making me feel any better.
So I asked God, “Why aren’t you enough? I want you to be.”
He said, “Because you say it, but you don’t really believe it. You feel like I forget you too.”
I knew this was true. “Why do I think that?”
“Because of Daniel.”
And then I got so mad, because I knew exactly what he meant and I knew it was true and I finally let myself feel it: God forget me when he let Daniel die. Why did he do this to me? When he sat there and watched Daniel end his life, did God even think about me?
To further clear things up, God added, “And that’s why you don’t believe I’ll come through in your fundraising either. You’re afraid I’ll forget to provide for you. If little humans forget you, why would I remember you when I have so many other people to bless? People who haven’t been shutting me out for four months?”
Yep, he got me. I didn’t even realize it, but that’s exactly what my thoughts have been saying. I don’t deserve his blessings; I’m making backup plans in case I need to take care of myself, because I never fully trust anyone with my needs, not even God.
So after I cried awhile, something I’ve rarely let myself do on the Race, I told God, “Okay, so I need to learn to trust you again and stop being afraid to let you love me?”
He wasn’t finished though. “And you need to let your team love you too.”
I rolled my eyes. “I do not. I only need you.”
He argued, “Remember the time I taught you about being made to need certain things? [You can read about that day here] You do need your team because I want to love you through them. When you close yourself off from their love, you’re also shutting me out.”
I tried to think of an argument, but all that would come to my mind was the scene from Catching Fire where Katniss says to Peeta, “I don’t want to be in there with anyone but you.” How the whole movie, she’s so resistant to having any allies, even though she needs them to survive, and even when she gets a few, she never trusts them, even though all they want to do is save her life.
Basically: I have to stop pushing God away, I have to stop blocking out my feelings, and when I feel them, I need to stop hiding them from my team.
Reading all of that, you’d probably think I’d learned my lesson and closed that book up. But of course God wasn’t done yet.
This post is getting long though, so, part 2 will come soon.
