Why I Told God I Hated Him and How He Responded

As you read the story that follows, please understand that it is a true and accurate record of the darkest period in my life, but is also the story of how I came to realize that God, my Heavenly Father has not ever truly left me. It is the story of events and troubles in my life that brought me to the brink of insanity, but eventually taught me to understand our desperate need for trust, even when it is terribly hard to see the future or make sense of the present. The story is an intensely personal one, but it's told with a purpose. My hope is that those of you who have ever suffered something similar or may be suffering now will reach out in your grief and pain to God, rather than pushing Him away. His love and mercy truly know no bounds. Trust me, I've seen it in action. Here's the story.

On June 23, 2009, I walked gingerly toward the door of the UIC Medical Center with my husband and a nurse who had escorted me in a wheelchair to the exit, from the labor and delivery area of the hospital. I was in a small amount of pain physically. There is no measure that I can use to quantify the amount of emotional pain I was in. I was destroyed, I was angry, I had been betrayed, and not only my heart, but my womb was empty. My husband left to get our car from the parking garage. The nurse stood beside me silently while I waited for him to arrive. I’m sure she was tired. I was exhausted and totally depleted. It was shortly after eleven p.m., we had been at the hospital since around eight a.m., and we were looking forward to about a forty minute drive to our apartment on the northwest side of Chicago. Michael and I spoke few words on the way home, hitting a drive-thru for something to eat since neither of us had eaten a bite since sometime around seven in the morning. When we arrived home, we ate in silence. We didn’t turn on the television and we didn’t speak a word. We nuzzled and snuggled our cat, an animal keenly sensitive to the feelings and emotions my husband and I experience, and who is not used to being left along for that length of time. Finally, shortly after one-thirty a.m., we went to bed where we curled into each other and slept, hard.

I found out in March 2009 that I was pregnant, about two months after Michael was diagnosed with congestive heart failure, ventricular tachycardia, and cardiomyopathy. We had insurance at the time through Michael’s employer, and saw more than one qualified cardiologist. But not one doctor could tell us if he would live another two months, two years, or two decades. Shortly after being diagnosed, he lost his job due to absenteeism resulting from two hospitalization episodes. I couldn’t afford the insurance offered by my employer, and now I was pregnant. I was terrified. How were we going to afford a baby? We had only one income, our medical bills were piling up into the tens of thousands of dollars rapidly. Our rent was late, we were visiting a local food bank to supplement our groceries, Michael was receiving free meds and doctor visits from a clinic in the city, but nothing beyond medication that was tailored to his conditions. His initial claim for Social Security Disability was denied, and we had a lawyer working on the appeal, but everything we were being told led us to believe that it was a lost cause. What the hell were we going to do? We were NOT ready. What if Michael got sick and I couldn’t be home with the baby? What if, what if, what if?

I asked the questions over and over again after I knew for certain that we were having a baby. But then, our low income qualified me for public aid and at least the baby and I were covered as far as medical care was concerned. We stopped questioning and began to hope. We accepted the fact that no one is every really ready for a baby. We found ourselves thrilled that we were going to be parents. My husband was born to be a husband and a father. We took it as a sign of God’s blessing on our marriage, and as a promise that no matter how dark our world seemed to get, He would always shine a light that allowed us to see a future. We took it as a sign of hope that Michael’s condition might be manageable enough for us to keep him around for a good, long time. Mostly, we accepted it as a sign of God’s continued presence and assured providence.About three weeks before we took the trip to the UIC Medical Center, I was told by my Maternal Fetal Medicine specialist that our baby would not survive full term. More than likely the baby would not survive the next few weeks. My womb was entirely empty of amniotic fluid, and there was no way for the baby to live and develop without it. A trip to the ER had made them wonder about the fluid levels, but follow-up ultrasounds with my regular OB/GYN didn’t seem to show anything abnormal. I had just crossed the threshold into my third trimester, and was told that everything from this point on should progress quite normally. Two weeks later another ultrasound by the Maternal Fetal Medicine specialist told a very different story. The baby’s heartbeat, while audible, was incredibly weak and there was no fluid at all that could be seen on the ultrasound. The doctor delivered the news that we would not be having this baby after all. The suggestion was made that I “interrupt” the pregnancy to avoid complications which could be dangerous to my health. Michael and I agonized for days. I silently begged God to take this decision out of my hands. It was already a high risk pregnancy due to a number of different health issues I had, and the baby was not going to survive anyway. I told Michael that I couldn’t stand the waiting and the fear of what might happen. He supported me, and we made the appointment with UIC.

He accompanied me to the Medical Center and into the procedure room because I refused to be apart from him during this experience. When the doctor began the dilation part of the D&C, he looked strange and left the room briefly. Before I really understood what was happening, they were rushing me in a wheelchair to a room in labor and delivery. I had gone into labor and there was no need for the D&C. They were going to have me deliver my dead child naturally. I can’t go into the detail of what transpired over the next twelve plus hours, and there is no need to do so. I delivered my first child, dead, at just around twenty-two weeks sometime around 10 p.m. When they came and took my baby away, I lay in the hospital bed and silently told God that I hated Him and that I was done with Him forever.

When we lost the baby, I lost all hope and any bit of faith I'd maintained since finding out that Michael was sick. I finally came to the point where I could not fight, could not struggle, and felt that I simply could not move anymore. I sank into a depression that I can’t begin to describe. I stopped talking to God. I stopped talking to friends. I stopped talking to anyone but Michael, and even he and I had a hard time communicating. His grief was as deep as mine; different maybe, but just as devastating. I returned to work two days after I gave birth to my baby, hoping that resuming some semblance of routine existence would help me move past the grief. It did not. One Saturday morning, I lay on the couch and knew, with a certainty I had never known before, that not only did I hate God, but that He had indeed abandoned us. I was done. I lay that way for hours, and despite the fact that my husband, who has loved me through every moment of our difficult life together, was present with me, I never felt more alone and empty in my life.

Then, a miracle happened. It didn’t happen suddenly, rather over a period of time during which I actually refused to stop moving. I still didn’t talk to God, and when He attempted to talk to me, I deliberately ignored him. I moved, or so I thought, too fast for Him to catch me. I applied for and landed a new job resulting in a significantly higher income. The new job put us in a position to begin to attack some of our debt. I had a new mission. I had new motivation. I didn’t forget what had happened, but I set aside my grief and sublimated the energy into changing what I could to make our life better, at least from a material perspective. Then one day, Michael and I began to genuinely communicate about what we had just been through. We realized how similar our grief actually was, and how we had both responded to God out of a sense of betrayal, anger, confusion, and pain. Together, we spoke to God again, with trembling hands and shaky words. I had told God that I hated Him. Maybe Michael did too, I’m not sure. How do you take that back? And how does He respond when you ask for His help after so shamefully rejecting Him? Well, let me tell you. He forgives, and He opens His arms and begs you to run headlong into His embrace. I had said I hated Him, I had said He was mean and spiteful and cruel to take back a gift He had offered. I had lain for hours and weeks convinced that He had abandoned me. If He was such a good and loving Father, how could He take away my child? I screamed and railed at Him that He could never understand the pain and grief that I was feeling. And, even more, that it was His fault.

He responded to me by saying that when He had walked the earth in the person of Jesus, he too had felt betrayed and angry. I don’t know for sure, but in His humanity, I wonder if Jesus sometimes felt that the Father was mean, spiteful, or cruel. In His divinity, He knew better. But, at some point, I’m certain that Abraham thought those things about God, Job most assuredly did, and others throughout the course of Judeo-Christian history have as well. But, He allowed me and my husband the time we needed to exhaust and empty ourselves of the grief and bitterness that we were feeling. And, once we recognized that without our grief and bitterness to nurse, we truly were empty, we recognized that we needed God to fill us again, or it would certainly be the end of us. So, we went to Him as humbly as we could, and said a simple, “I’m sorry.” God responded with a simple, “You’re forgiven.” And His love began to fill our souls again.

It’s been almost two years since God took our child back. I have no doubt that our baby is in the arms of God and His angels. God has blessed us in numerous ways that have put us in a position where we are now actually (at least financially) ready to have a baby. Eventually, that better job, which started as a temp to hire position, turned into an even better permanent , full time position with a pay increase that was enough to cover the employee portion of the benefits and still allow me to bring home what I’d been bringing home as a temp. Michael was awarded his Social Security Disability. We are insured again, and he has an excellent team of doctors caring for him. He had a pacemaker/defibrillator implanted that helps to ease some of the fear we used to experience about sudden cardiac arrest as a result of the ventricular tachycardia, and also helps to strengthen his heartbeat, which in turn can help with the congestive heart failure. Our rent is always paid on time, we don’t need the food bank, and we got a new cat. He came home to us a couple months after the baby went home to God. He was only about five weeks old and had been rescued from the top of a semi trailer behind a meat market. We took him in because we needed a baby of some kind, and he's made a fantastic addition to the household.

Currently, our family consists of me and my husband, an incredibly sensitive and intuitive middle-aged cat, and a terribly sassy teenaged cat. We still pray that God will give us another baby, one that we get to keep this time. For now, though, His love, forgiveness, and continued providence are present in every moment of our life together. Nearly eleven years ago, when my mother died, my spiritual director told me that it was when our lives were darkest that we could be most certain of God’s presence. That darkness, he assured me, was due to the fact that God had me cradled in one hand, and covered with the other. The summer into fall of 2009 was the darkest and most frightening period of my life. But, God had me covered the whole time, even though I didn’t realize it. Now, I don't get so frightened when it starts to get dark. I know something big is happening, but I know Someone bigger has me covered while it does.