When religion/faith and trauma don’t quite mix

Maybe I should warn you now, this post might be one you disagree with, or not understand, and that’s okay. I’m aware I’m probably in the minority with my feelings, but that’s okay too.

I don’t talk about religion or God much or anything like that. Usually, I avoid the topic at all costs. The topic is hard for me, and it isn’t one I understand. I want to be blunt here, and I don’t want to worry about your feelings when I’m writing. So I do apologize, but I’m going to be raw here.

I don’t understand how there can be a God. I don’t understand how there can be religion, or a “higher power” or anything like that, when there is SO much pain and suffering. I’ll make this a bit smaller and simpler by just talking about myself, and leaving the rest of the worlds pain and suffering out of this. But I just…I can’t make sense of it.

Since we’re making it smaller and just talking about my world for simplicity’s sake, it just doesn’t seem possible. My world is so consumed with pain and suffering and trauma.

Sexual assault, abuse, rape, a seriously fucked up childhood, a son that I placed for adoption 8 years ago that I don’t get to know and love in the ways I want to, need to, a genetic disorder and a life filled with physical pain, countless surgeries, health issues…and at least 2 of my children who will die of this very same progressive genetic disorder. Trauma on top of trauma on top of trauma.

That isn’t even all of it, not by a long shot…but shouldn’t that be enough? Isn’t that enough for one person to deal with…isn’t it too much?

How can that be right? How can there be a God, or religion, or something that makes this okay? My life isn’t okay. There isn’t any light, there isn’t any happiness….it’s all just senseless pain.

Senseless pain. No one person deserves all of it. It isn’t fair, of course not. Life isn’t fair. But at a certain point, we exceed the rationale of your typical life isn’t fair and wander into…what the fuck territory.

I feel so tired and broken. No one is coming to save me, no one is coming to heal me, that isn’t how this works. If there was some higher power, if there was something that was supposed to be there….surely things wouldn’t be like this. Surely I would not have fallen through the cracks this badly.

I know there will be a lot of people who disagree with my thinking on this. And that’s okay. This is just how I feel. One very broken, hurting person. With a lifetime of what seems like senseless pain.

I put good things out into the world. I try to be the kind of person that I wish someone was to me…and I just don’t feel like I, or anyone else, deserves all of this.

Is it enough that I wake up every day and I’m alive? Is that the argument? That I should be grateful and thankful for that? I am, don’t get me wrong…but, and maybe this is selfish…that doesn’t seem like enough to me.

To live a life of suffering, of heartache and loss and grief and trauma, of watching your loved ones, your children, be so severely affected by a genetic disorder that you know they could die….

There’s just too much pain. And I don’t think I’ll ever be able to really understand why. It seems senseless. There can’t be logic, or a “plan” behind it. There is no greater good in all of my personal suffering. There is no good that will come of this, of my life being what it is.

I want to believe that there is. I really, truly do. Nothing would make me happier than knowing there was a “plan”, that this actually did make sense, that things really will be okay. But I just….I can’t get there.

It’s seems so senseless. It seems so pointless. I don’t see a point of the pain.