Where is God? Where is my submission?

WARNING: I'm tired, I'm emotional, I'm not sure any of this makes sense... Read with a salt shaker at hand and imbibe of the granules regularly...


I am not a practicing anything. I am not part of any organized religious group. However, I attended a Roman Catholic school for eight years. Generally speaking, I do not subscribe to that faith anymore.

But today, I'm stuck.

Today, I learned that a good friend's sister is 22 weeks pregnant. The baby she is carrying is not viable. At the twenty-week ultrasounds, they saw some deformities that led to a high-def ultrasound. There is no connection between the two halves of the baby's brain. This is not a case of mental retardation...this is a life that will not last more than an a few minutes.

This woman is with a very strong Christian doctor and hospital. They will not abort, and this woman will not seek other care. At 24 weeks, there is a reasonable chance that a normal, healthy baby could survive...and so, at 24 weeks, the doctor will induce labor, supposedly "to create a premature birth that will allow nature to take its path." This woman will labor and give a natural birth to a child who will die in her arms if it survives the birthing.

Where is God?

I struggle with what I know of the Bible...Genesis 2-3 is where it begins, I suppose...The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, from which Eve and Adam ate the fruit despite being warned not to, and thus were banished...but not abandoned.

Is that where our medical knowledge comes in? Is medicine "evil" knowledge? Why is it okay to peer into our bodies to create healing but not to offer death? Why is it right to sustain life with respirators and chemicals and IV-lines, but not right to remove artificial life support? Why...knowing that there is agony and suffering... can we not shorten a life? Why are we forbidden mercy?

Such hard questions are the reason I turned my back on the Catholic Church so many years ago. I lack the resolve and courage that this woman has to suffer for what she believes is the path of righteousness. I lack the faith and the devotion that I will not be not abandoned.

So it is, perhaps, in my submission.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about Fear in Slavery, and I said that two of my greatest fears were not being good enough and not being acceptable. Perhaps I mis-stated. Perhaps my greatest fear is that no matter the depths of my submission and devotion, I will be abandoned, again, by the one I love most.

I learned the lesson over five years of watching my mother suffer countless surgeries, treatments, and complications of cancer. I learned that my needs and my happiness weren't worthy of consideration in the BIG PICTURE. I learned I wasn't good enough to stop the death of the one I loved most. I was abandoned. Maybe worse, I was asked to provide the means for that abandonment and I did as I was asked. Unlike Abraham, the angel did not stop me (Genesis 22:12).

Where was God?

Today, I am wife, mother, pixie... But am I submissive? I don't know. I hold myself back...even from my Beloved and my children. Oh, I like to be of service...I like to make the lives of those around me easier and more pleasant, but ask me to suffer, and I can't bring myself to do it. Not really. I withdraw, get jaded, hide inside my head. I do not have the courage and resolve to see it through. Where is my submission if I do not have the faith and devotion to trust that deeply?