This was inspired by a recent post by Gabriel's Trumpet, who wrote about the existence of God and her personal journey from Atheism to Theism.
I read it just after talking to my wife about my sister-in-law--they talked on the phone the other day. My wife is the oldest of eight, and my SIL is the youngest. And she has had a hard life. She got mixed up with drugs in high school, tried suicide, grew up a little but had the misfortune to fall in love with a series of nogoodniks, raising two kids basically by herself. In recent years, she has been having heart troubles and had a pacemaker put in her chest. She had to go on disability because of her heart condition.
And then things changed. A few years ago, she got involved in a local church, got religion for really the first time--and at about the same time met this older guy at the church, whom she fell in love with. He moved in with her, and they were happy. We met him. He seemed like a nice guy. Things were well. They were happy. Until he started having troubles with coughing, and the doctors discovered lung cancer.
He died last summer. They had married right at the very end, and he passed away that night. Can you imagine her heartbreak?
So now the anniversary is coming up, and she wants out of the home they lived in. She had been planning to move to a nearby city (where her son lives) and had been living in the house by herself. But now, with the anniversary coming up, she wants to move out now. My wife said she's depressed.
Anyway, last summer, as we were driving home from the funeral, I talked to my wife about it and told her that I was really having a hard time dealing with this. Look at my SIL. She has really had a hard life. Sort of ostracized from the rest of her family--my wife is the only sister she really can talk to. Yes, she's made plenty mistakes and has paid for them, in many ways. Two rotten marriages. And then she meets this other guy. And he gets her to go to church again for the first time in many years. My SIL feels really loved by a man for the first time in her life.
And what happens? They get a year together before he dies.
So, I told my wife, I don't know how to feel about this. What am I supposed to think? Was this some part of a heavenly "divine plan" for her? Is it "God's will" that she never feel loved? Did God want her to go through all the shit she had to, then find someone whom she could love and cherish--only to have it all taken away again?
That's cruel. And, I asked my wife, why? Why would God do this to her, especially after how she had turned to him again?
I didn't get an answer. I still don't have an answer. I still don't know why. Maybe I never will know. But what I do know is that today I have a lot less confidence in the divine presence that I was taught about in Sunday school. Maybe it's just another thing I learned when I was young that turns out to be something altogether different.
Hey, I want to thank everyone for their positive wishes this morning, in my test. It was an entry exam for getting a job with the Postal Service. Yep, the guys who bring you your snail mail, bills, credit card applications and tax forms.
They were testing on various skills, like comparing addresses, filling out forms, address zones and memorization (the part I was most worried about).
I think I did OK. They'll eventually send me my scores.
Do you want to guess how long I've been at the paper where I work? How about nearly 25 years? So why am I looking for a change? Money. The postal service may be deadly dull work by comparison, but even their entry level positions pay a lot better than the weekly newspaper biz, not to mention better insurance and other benefits. I figured it out--out of my gross pay last year, health insurance alone took away over 20% of it.
So we'll see what happens. They'll let me know how I did. If I did well enough, I'll get word of an opening once in a while. I'm not expecting anything to happen in the short term. Way too early to start counting chickens.
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