I never understood the idea of being “angry” at God. I’m blessed to call God my Savior and due to my shockingly offensive sin before being saved, it was always pretty easy for me to grasp that the problem is down here, within me, not for Him to be blamed when things go wrong. Over the years I have seen much of His love and grace everywhere I look. When I have seen suffering, I’ve known that He too mourns the brokenness of this world.
So whenever I heard about anger towards God it just didn’t make sense. Especially because I often viewed it in the context of conversations regarding His existence, in which case I know that being angry at God doesn’t mean He ceases to exist.
When my daughter was exactly 2 weeks old I took her out of her bassinet to feed her at midnight as one does with a 2 week old. I laid her down to change her diaper and something wasn’t right. I looked at her looking back at me and had a feeling that was different than every other time. I’m a natural worrier so I quickly tried to talk myself down. Within seconds her eyes widened in panic and her arms flung up like boards beside her head. She was flinging her head back and not breathing. Her lips went completely blue almost immediately. I called my dad, picked her up and ran. Fortunately we live near a doctor so while I was on the phone with the ambulance we reached the doctors house and panicked, got her into his arms asap. She continued to fling her head back in distress, with her eyes wide and her mouth sealed shut.
“My babies not breathing!” “Okay mam what is your address?” “123 address, my babies not breathing!!!!” “Yes mam you said that you have to stay calm for your baby okay.”
While we waited for the ambulance the doctor did all the things. Patting her back, rubbing her chest, scooping out liquid that had accumulated in her mouth. She came back to breathing regularly, her lips returned to their normal color, she even did a blow out on the poor doctor and then.. like nothing she fell back to sleep. In the days following I was pretty confident that had we not lived near a doctor that would not have ended so well. Thankfully, we will never know.
Everyone was unconcerned considering she was back to normal and suggested we go to sleep and just keep an eye out. WHAT. Needless to say, sleep wasn’t really a reality for a couple weeks. Walking home from the doctor’s house, holding my daughter close I felt something I never felt before.
“God, if you let that happen to her again, I will never forgive You.” I told Him that He can take her if He so chooses, but please don’t let her suffer. Over and over again I told Him the same thing. And I meant my threat as much as I had ever meant anything. It was scary and it was real. I began to think about how up to this point my relationship with God was pretty smooth sailing and that I was willing to throw that all away and potentially spend eternity in Hell separated from God should He allow my daughter to suffer one more time.
I comforted myself by knowing that she would not remember this experience. She seemed to forget almost immediately actually. Long story short, we spent a couple days in the hospital after that trying to get to the bottom of it with no concrete answers. And a week later after coming home, my worst nightmare came true. It happened again.
This time I knew what to do, I had watched the doctor, I had spoken to the nurses at the hospital and I was more informed, so I did all the things. She was okay. Still not sleeping and a few more tests later we found out that she has a couple stomach issues that combine for the perfect storm of horrific episodes if left unaddressed. (For any moms of newborns reading this, she has a reflux, overproduction of stomach acid, which may be due to her allergies which we also found out later.) The stomach acid was actually coming up through her stomach into her nasal passages and throat, seemingly suffocating her. My Lord, I don’t even like to write that.
God, how could you let this happen to my innocent child, she is Yours. Why would you allow her to suffer? But as with other aspects of my daughter’s young life, the momentary suffering was reserved for me, which I thank God for. She won’t know the pain of her short lived episodes. She won’t know the fear of going through tests in a hospital. She won’t know the anxiety of waiting for results. She is none the wiser. To see photos of her during this difficult time would show that she was as happy as ever. There are parents who are not as privileged in this sense in that their children will remember, my heart and sincere prayers go out to those families.
Before I move on I will say that she has grown so much since then. She reacted well to her medicine (famotodine and maalox) and as I write this she has completely recovered. Praise God!
As far as my anger towards God went, it started to fade. The second time she had an episode, the feeling seemed more distant. I thought “of course,” because when it comes to me against God, He wins every time. I had no chance to hold onto those feelings that in the moment let me indulge myself with a fleeting and faulty feeling of control. But what sticks is knowing that I am capable of feeling things that are very real in the moment and that go against what I believe, that God is always good. I don’t think there would be any other circumstance that I could threaten God Himself in the way that I did and in that way I see that it was an opportunity that God took to bless me. I can no longer take on an assuming attitude towards anyone with “anger” towards God because now, however briefly, I lived it.
When I was pregnant I prayed and prayed for God to name my daughter and He delivered. Her name means “protected by God.” It is a great comfort to me, but in a moment I let all of that fly out the window. I see better now, from my new perspective of hindsight which does allow me to continue believing that God is good every second of every day. The incredible timing that I happened to reach for her at that moment, the doctor being steps away, being prepared the second and third time she had a little episode. The help of the hospital staff, my family and friends.
I was a wreck for the better part of the next month. I stayed up watching her so much that I actually had a couple hallucinations and had it not been for my family definitely would not have made it. Funny now, terrifying at the time, 10/10 don’t recommend. But the bottom line is that I struggled to trust God. What I saw was hard to reconcile to what I believe and in those moments it’s hard to put your money where your mouth is. I have a new understanding about “anger” towards God and through that experience I can better sympathize with others who have experienced similar feelings. I thought my relationship with God would excuse me from such an understanding but I am now humbled, to say the least.
My journey to commit to trusting my God who is faithful in all circumstances, every moment of every day is ongoing and probably will be for the rest of my life. But I cannot quickly forget what I now know, and didn’t completely understand before: that our emotions are strong, they are real, and if we don’t take everything we have to God Himself we are in danger of submitting to their control. Our emotions are a gift from God that in many ways make us more like Him. They help us recognize the difference between beauty and destruction. Unity and division. Right and wrong. But as with everything on this side of Heaven, if we submit to them alone they are capable of leading us into the dark.
It was scary to feel genuine anger towards God, but I’m glad I went right to Him rather than sitting with those feelings or trying to work out what had happened on my own.
