Streen wrote: I'll try to make this a short story, because there are a lot of details that would make this a novel, so I'll just mention the essential parts.
I was in a car accident 10 years ago. After many surgeries and hospital stays, I managed to heal up and start living a fairly normal life again. Then, this past January, I suffered some complications that landed me back in the hospital for more surgery. Currently I am back where I was, limited by my injuries, and bored out of my mind because I can't do what I love.
For some time now I've wondered if God was punishing me in some way. My assumption was that he is in control of every detail of life and that he put me where I am now. I wondered, why does God cause horrible things to happen? This question has burdened my mind a lot recently. When I think about disasters, and how people thank God for some small miracle when it seems he cause the disaster in the first place, why thank God?
Then I had a realization. We live in a messed up world. Did God make it this way? Of course not. We did that (or some might believe that Satan did). So whenever something bad happens, we can't really blame God for our misfortune because odds are that at the root of the problem is something WE caused. So whenever God steps in and helps, it IS a miracle, because he's saving us from ourselves.
That is, at least, how I see it.
I was born with mild Epilepsy and mild cerebral palsy in my left side. This was due to me having a stroke at birth. I had, and still have a slight bend in my arm and I the most I can turn my left hand is to the extent of if you were shaking hands, there is little to no dexterity in my left hand and arm. I used to have both petit mal and grand mal seizures. to make matters worse, my left foot turned inward for most of my childhood so I kept tripping and falling over my feet, I was, as you can imagine, teased. My mom helped me doing phyisical therapy and we thought my foot would go straight....then gravity took over and it went club-footed. until 16 years of age i used to have to have training wheels on my bicycle. throughout all of this, doctors told my parents I'd never walk again, never be able to live a normal life. I won't lie, I used to think God was punishing me too, why would God allow me to live? why would my parents want to keep such a child? I kept being told the same thing "God has a reason for everything, and he has a special purpose for you" I never gave up, proved the doctors wrong, I can walk on my own, can ride my bike on my own, worked hard and got a Contract job with the FBI for a short while in 1995. and then In 2006 I was riding my bike on the sidewalk, rushing to get home for my "then girlfriend's kids"I saw the lady waiting to turn out, even though I was in a hurry I slowed way down to give her time to go. Sadly she didn't until i was almost in front of her. Long-story short version : Left leg ( the one with the cerebral palsy) fell off and behind the pedal as i turned to try to avoid her, as the front tire of my bike moved into her wheel-well, the pedals rotated and shattered my left leg in four places. Two aspects of different parts of my life that I should have died or gotten hurt worse than I did. Why didn't I? Blaming God does not help, all it does is allows us to vent our anger on questions we cannot answer with simple logic. It is easy to blame God, It is much harder to see he has a purpose for us. It is harder to see that things happen for a reason. Sometimes, when people in our lives die or people that we hear die because of a natural disaster or plane crash, or whatever the horrific thing was, we call it unfair and ask why God would do that. As unfair as I believe it is, I believe why it happens is because God must make room for the ones that are being born. I know that I should have died twice. It IS a miracle that I didn't and I am thankful that God did save me twice. I thank him each day. He put me here for a reason. I feel he brought me here to learn and become a knight, a councilor, and a minister to help others. I know there are many here that believe differently than I do, however I believe that he has put all of us here on earth and together in this temple for a reason. We may not know what it is, we may not understand it, but there is a purpose for everything. I do disagree that he is saving us from ourselves in some extent. I believe God is guiding us, trying to teach us, but he leaves it up to us to make the choices we make.
