Today has been a day of many conversations – and has left me with a head full of thoughts on a variety of topics, a couple of which I was planning on writing about this evening, to get my thoughts into some kind of order.

However now I’m sat writing, what I’m going to type is not at all what I actually had in mind.

As I sat down to my laptop tonight and opened her up she launched into action from where we left off last night. The music I had playing last night as I went to sleep before I shut Mildred (yeah I named my laptop, and my car, and, well lets leave it there…) kicked into action.

These were the words that started to play from the random playlist Spotify was obviously working its way through –

‘God in my hoping, there in my dreaming
God in my watching, God in my waiting
God in my laughing, there in my weeping
God in my hurting, God in my healing

Be my everything, be my everything’ – (Tim Hughes)

And I got a bit teary eyed. Now if you’ve been following my journey even just slightly over the last 6 months, you will not be surprised to hear this. I think I must be known as the ‘weeping woman’ in church for my inability to go and not cry (although I have managed a couple of services lately!).

Anyway, its a really powerful song. One thats been sung a couple of times in the church Im at now since I’ve been there. And I’ve always had to leave. Just like I’ve always had to leave when a couple of other songs are sung. Because I’ve been unable to cope with the words. I’ve been unable to cope with what they mean. I can’t open my mouth to sing them (if I’m not much else, I’m not a hypocrite, so I aint gonna sing something I don’t believe) and I could not even bear to sit and listen to them. When my brain overloads or something gets too close to the bone my default reaction is to run away – hence always leaving the services.

Sometimes I’ve had to leave to protect them and myself from my anger. Because these songs have had the ability to make me angry. Really really angry, and I can feel it rising in me. So angry that I want to scream at them all, all of them singing the words, raising their hands, engaging. I’ve wanted to disrupt meetings and tell them how fricking wrong they are. How wrong it all is. I’ve stood in meetings battling with the urge to totally rage, shaking my head and literally chanting ‘No’ to myself, because I have been unable to entertain the possibility that any of the stuff I’m hearing is true. As I’ve left I’ve punched walls of the buildings and I’ve dinted my car by kicking it. I’ve ranted, and raged, to myself, and vowed several times never to go back. I’m not a generally angry person, honestly, but its like every now and then the built up emotion that I don’t know how to deal with or that overwhelms me comes out all at once.

Its not happened often. But the several occasions it has over the last 6 months has been when these songs I mentioned above have part of the worship. Why?

Because I have been so angry with God. So so angry. I was more angry at God than anyone – more angry at God than my biological father, who abused me. More angry at God than my brother, who physically bruised me, many times over many years, and I was more angry at God than I was the people who attacked me 7 years ago, on a life changing day where nothing was ever to be the same again.

I was angry at God. I often thought to myself I didn’t believe in God any more. But actually I’ve always believed in God. I’ve always believed He has existed. I’ve always believed He has been about somewhere, but I’ve not always believed that He has been for me. I’ve not always believed that He is a good God. And that He is a God who loves me. I’ve not always believed He has been with me. I’ve not always believed that.

And these songs, the song above in particular provoked such anger in me towards God. And I never really knew why.

Until tonight.

And I found myself, through tears singing to it.

God in my …

God in my …

God in my …

healing, hoping, dreaming, laughing, waking, sleeping, resting, dreaming

God in my everything.

 

And I realised why I could never sing those words, or even bear to hear them because –

– how could God be in healing I never believed was possible?

– how could God be in any sort of hoping when I had no hope?

– how could God be in my dreams, because I had no dreams for myself or my future

– how could God be in the laughter that does not exist any more?

– how could God be in the waking/sleeping/resting that was plagued with nightmares and desperate darkness.

– how could God in my everything because I was/there was nothing.

– because how could God?

 

And yet, I’ve come to a place – tonight, I’m in a place, where I can sit, and I can let those words flow over me, I can open my mouth and sing them, I can read the words, and feel the meaning, and realise that, actuality God IS in my everything.

And that there is an everything for God to be in. Including my anger –

Then it struck me –  I’m not angry with God any more.

I don’t have all the answers. I have not got it all sussed out. I still have many questions and things I need to work through. There is still miles and miles and miles of this never ending journey to travel, this journey of restoration. But I’m not angry with God any more, and its a start.

And there is a hope, that He is in. There is healing that He is definitely in the middle of.

And I am deeply deeply thankful to be in a different place to when I first walked through the doors of the church I’m at now. That painfully, steps forwards are being made. Life is changing. I am changing. I am being changed.

And I’m deeply thankful that the God I rejected 6 years ago, has accepted me back and is back in my everything, because I’m realising now that He never actually left it.

I’m deeply thankful, this week, as we head towards the 11th April which marks 6 years since I took such a serious overdose, my Dr’s were surprised I lived that I am still here.

God is in my everything, whatever that everything is, and I am glad to be alive.