Right now I hate God, because I hate myself. [View All]

[IdaBriggs]

I am very clear on it. I am in the middle of trying to cope with the loss of my two beloved dogs Anya and Tessa, who were killed instantaneously by the same car when I didn't grasp their leashes quickly enough and they escaped my clutches at the groomer's. I had bottle fed them as nine day old orphans, and considered them "my children" instead of "my dogs" due to an eight year battle with infertility. I am currently five and a half month's pregnant with twins, and there is no doubt in my mind this accident was completely preventable and my fault.

Like every other person on the planet, I have dealt with my share of tragedy and triumph in life; generally I think of myself as a "strong" person. I usually have a positive outlook on life, and am able to keep "bad things" in perspective. For example, I grew up in a highly abusive home, but was able to not only forgive my parents, but also myself. I actively worked to find strength, compassion, and wisdom from the experience, using it to allow me to help others recovering from similar pain. Faith did not protect one from "bad things happening" in my mind, but it made it easier to cope with them.

Through it all, I continued to hold onto the idea of a loving, compassionate God whose will was unknowable, but always had our best interests at heart. Each experience, no matter how challenging, was simply a step on our journey, with the eventual destination being a "remembering" of our being a beloved child of God. When "bad things happened" it was not because we were being "punished" by a cruel and capricious God, but rather that our limited understanding prevented us from seeing the bigger picture.

Today I do not see things the same way. I hate God. If I could kill God, I would. I am ANGRY. I understand this is part of the grieving process, and have been assured this too shall pass. For me, my Puppy Girls were my BABIES, and I have lost them in a traumatic accident in the prime of their lives instead of after they have lived rich, full lives. The scene keeps replaying in my head, and the knowledge that it is *MY FAULT* with no acceptable excuses BURNS....

I feel cheated. I finally received the blessing of pregnancy, and appear to have "traded" my Fur Babies for Human Babies. Looking back in the midst of my grief, it seems like every moment of happiness and joy I have ever experienced has been PAID FOR in pain, misery, and tears. My expectations of a truly happy holiday for the first time in nearly a decade because we have FINALLY "finished" our infertility battle are in ruins -- I keep listening for Anya and Tessa's call to me, and the silence is deafening.

I am a bereaved mother, and the love I bear for the babies inside of me is not a replacement for the love I have/had for my Lost Ones.

The answer, of course, is forgiveness, but I'm not there yet. Being unable to forgive myself, I cannot forgive God. Hating God, I cannot love myself. I want to punish God -- HURT GOD -- HATE GOD -- like I want to do to myself, and obviously I can't. My innocent Puppy Girls are dead, and it is my fault! But it is also God's fault, too, because when I was unable to watch over them, at some level I had trust that God would step up to the plate instead.

God failed me as much as I failed myself. Rainbow Bridges and pretty talk of heaven aside, I will never see Anya and Tessa again in this lifetime, and their last moments are still fresh in my mind. The only "cure" is time and space. There are obviously other "blessings" in my life -- I am pregnant, after all, with a wonderful loving and supportive husband -- but I feel battered by life at the moment, and unconvinced that I am worthy of any love or future happiness. The pain is both emotional and spiritual; in addition to losing Anya and Tessa, I have also lost the trust, still at some level an innocent one, of a loving, benevolent Creator. There is no purpose that I can ever see that will justify my loss. My brain just ... stops ... at finding this loss ACCEPTABLE at any level.

Time, space and forgiveness. It appears I must simply slog through the grief, and hope there is something better than the pain I currently feel on the other side. I am not the first to experience what feels like an overwhelming loss; I will not be the last.

The world will continue to turn regardless....