I don't know the answers

I’m not writing about this because of one particular instance or conversation. Within the last year of my life I believe I have been approached with these questions and these circumstances more than once. And with no answers, with nothing better to say other than the cliché responses of “everything happens for a reason” or “I don’t know.” I won’t pretend to understand. I do not understand. I will pretend to have a newfound realization though. A lot of what I am fixing to say is inspired if not direct quotes from an amazing conversation I had with my husband. Thank you, God. Thank you for giving me a husband who pulls me back in when I get too far out. Thank you, God for giving me a husband who always has the perfect thing to say right when I need to hear it. Thank you, God for using him to talk to me. I hear You now. What good is our faith, if it doesn’t work when we need it to? What is your faith? What do you believe in? And why? Do your beliefs remain consistent when they are challenged and tried? Life on Earth is a weird thing, as is death. I try not to ponder them all that much outside of my spiritual beliefs because the core of what they are is so deep. It is such an abstract thought so endless, so hard to wrap our human minds around. The foundation of our existence is to live…and to die. We make assumptions about what we think of our existence. What we think of our afterlives. What we think about who should get to live and who should get to die. We ask questions like “Why,” “When,” “What is the meaning of it,” “What is the reason behind it,” “Why is there pain and suffering,” “Why do some live and others die,” “Who gets to decide this…and why” “Why” “Why” “Why” As a believer, a child of God I feel like I should have better things to say, that I should have a better insight, that I should be a vessel to ease other’s confusion. However, in this one area…I am definitely not. We say that God writes straight with crooked lines. To make sense of that, we are the ones who seem them crookedly. Imagine, that you lived in a house and everything you had ever known was within the walls of that house. There were no windows for you to get a peek into the outside world and there was only one door: a door that was locked from the inside. But every once in a while some strange, unfamiliar being came and took someone from your house. Rather it be unexpectedly or slightly warned, you might be sad that person was taken from your house. You might be angry, confused and not see goodness or justice in it at all. It would be hard to imagine the light on the outside, the freedom, the eternity that was no longer bound by walls. Now, try to imagine what the person on the outside of those walls is experiencing. When we live and breathe and have every memory and every experience in this life, our minds grow narrow to something outside of the things we ‘know.’ Our minds and our existence in this life are tied to time; tied to what we believe to be good or bad; tied to what we see just and unjust; tied to what we see as merciful and merciless. The truth is…we shouldn’t make assumptions about life and death; we shouldn’t try to figure it out because…the answer is we don’t know why. Some of us know that there is a greater purpose, a better eternity, light outside of our walls, and an endless freedom waiting for us should we choose it. Is the greater despair really in the confusion of not knowing…or in the questions themselves? I don’t know the answers. All I know is that I choose not to ask the questions; I choose to let my faith be strong when I feel weak; let God carry me when I can’t walk; look at those crooked lines and know that they are straight; know that there truly is a reason…for everything; know that I’m not able to judge someone else’s life and death; and know that my mind is narrow and limited to the scope of my short time here.