The yuckiness of yuck

I may get better at this blogging stuff....obviously I MUCH prefer reading blogs then writing them.

So we went to church this past Sunday. For those of you who know us that is something of a feat. Not that we don't want to go because we do, but Kevin works so often on the weekends and I must admit that I find it entirely overwhelming to take the two kids by myself. So we go far less than we should and then we want to and we podcast the service far more often. However we are working on changing this, because we love God and we love church and we want our kids to love God and love church. So all that being said we went this past Sunday. And God walloped me. He looked right into my soul and said "here I am"

You see I really struggle with the idea of God's goodness and the brokenness of the world. I have a difficult time with the question of how really terrible things happen and where God is in those really terrible things. And I often don't know how to reconcile that issue in my own life and my own pain. I, as a Christian, don't feel that I have permission to think bad things are bad. That somehow thinking that diminishes the goodness of God. I struggle to grieve the hard things in my life feeling as if it somehow throwing my blessings back in God's face. And ironically this thwarts my relationship with God. It leaves me angry with Him and untrusting of Him.

So here's the thing, this is what I learned on Sunday morning, in the middle of my bad mood and unwilling spirit. God is good. All the time God is good. And evilness is evil. And these two facts are separate. I can hate evil and still know God is good because he is not causing the evil. I can't debate this. I can't explain why evil happens. But I can know that God is good and that good can not cause evil it can only alter and change evil back for good. Read the story of Joseph. It's a good story. Joseph had a lot of yuck in his life. And yet God was with him. And God redeemed the yuck.

I feel freedom. In a way that I have never felt before. I can love God. I can trust God and I can truly mourn the yuck in my life. I can feel blessed and know that I have more than I ever hoped for and yet still cry for what I don't have. That is not dismissing the greatness of God but it is embracing the yuckiness of yuck and trusting that God can do great things with my yuck. We need to be allowed to grieve the evil, messy, hard things in our life. It is ridiculous to encourage each other not too because "God has a plan". So if you are in a hard place - if you are in the yuck I promise not to tell you it's not that bad, because for you it is, and I promise not to say there is something bigger than you, because you know there is. I promise just to mourn with you. To sit in the yuck until God redeems it.

Evil is evil, yuck is yuck. God is good....all the time.