Okay, well, tonight my creative writing workshop class discussed my story about Mum. It was very helpful and everything but what has stuck in my mind is that a couple of people read it and wrote comments that... well... pissed me off a little. Next to my grandmother's comment that God is good, one wrote 'yeah right'. Next to some other thoughts of mine where I was trying to sort out, in my head, what God has to do with death, another wrote 'you should really do some thinking about God', as if I haven't, and as if the fact that sometimes I doubt him means I don't really believe. It's hard to explain when I don't want to put the story on here and show you, imaginary reader. I wasn't angry as such, I mean I understood what they were saying and I really do respect it, I just found it a little bit like opposite-proselytising. I don't see what right anyone has to invalidate the response of a mother whose child has just died, especially. (Because that is what my gran did say, when we went to see her straight after the death.)

And it made me want to say right here, right now, before anyone else can misunderstand the wanderings of a grieving mind - GOD IS GOOD. I have never doubted that throughout this entire time. I have seen his hand in everything that has happened; he has been closer to me throughout it than ever before. Sure, I've been depressed and angry and bitter at how the world is and what life's like and all that - but it has only had the effect of making me understand all the more why it is that Jesus' death is so important and making me long even more to see him. I think people have this idea that if a religion really works its followers should be bouncing with joy all the time; some Christians themselves have this idea too. But I refuse to be dishonest. I'm not going to start telling people they should be Christians because it's made my life like heaven; I'm going to tell people I will always know and love Christ because I need him.

It's made me want to quote to you (imaginary reader) some of the favourite quotes I have pinned up on my wardrobe door (even if I've quoted them before!). Here we go:

I could never myself believe in God if it were not for the cross... In the real world of pain, how could one worship a God who was immune to it? I have entered many Buddhist temples in different Asian countries and stood respectfully in front of the statue of Buddha, his legs crossed, arms folded, eyes closed, the ghost of a smile playing around his mouth, a remote look on his face, detached from the agonies of the world. But each time after a while I have to turn away. And in imagination I have turned instead to that lonely, wrenched, tortured figure on the cross, nails through hands and feet, back lacerated, limbs wrenched, brow bleeding from thorn-pricks, mouth dry and intolerably thirsty, plunged in God-forsaken darkness. That is the God for me! He laid aside his immunity to pain. He entered our world of flesh and blood, tears and death. He suffered for us. Our sufferings become more manageable in the light of his. There is still a question mark against human suffering, but over it we boldly stamp another mark, the cross which symbolises divine suffering. 'The cross of Christ ... is God's only self-justification in such a world' as ours. --John Stott

But when he had said "Yes," he thought of his Mother, and he thought of the great hopes he had had, and how they were all dying away, and a lump came in his throat and tears in his eyes, and he blurted out :
"But please, please - won't you - can't you give me something that will cure Mother?"
Up till then he had been looking at the Lion's great feet and the huge claws on them; now, in his despair, he looked up at its face. What he saw surprised him as much as anything in his whole life. For the tawny face was bent down near his own and (wonder of wonders) great shining tears stood in the Lion's eyes. They were such big, bright years compared with Digory's own that for a moment he felt as if the Lion must really be sorrier about his mother than he was himself. --from The Magician's Nephew, by C. S. Lewis

I know that my Redeemer lives,
and that in the end he will stand upon the earth
And after my skin has been destroyed,
yet in my flesh I will see God;
I myself will see him
with my own eyes - I, and not another.
How my heart yearns within me! --Job 19vv25-27

And this is from The Screwtape Letters, a excerpt I have looked at often whenever I start doubting. (In case you don't know what The Screwtape Letters about, they are made up of letters written from a senior devil to a junior one, advice on how to steer them away from God. Fantastic book, I would recommend it to anyone; even non-Christians would probably enjoy it.)
Merely to override a human will (as His felt presence in any but the most faint and mitigated degree would certainly do) would be for Him useless. He cannot ravish. He can only woo. ... He is prepared to do a little overriding at the beginning. He will set them off with communications of His presence which, though faint, seem great to them, with emotional sweetness, and easy conquest over temptation. But He never allows this state of affairs to last long. Sooner or later He withdraws, if not in fact, at least from their conscious experience, all those supports and incentives. He leaves the creature to stand up on its own legs - to carry out from the will alone duties which have lost all relish. It is during such trough periods, much more than during the peak periods, that it is growing into the sort of creature He wants it to be. Hence the prayers offered in the state of dryness are those which please Him best. ... He wants them to learn to walk, and must therefore take away His hand; and if only the will to walk is really there He is pleased even with their stumbles. Do not be deceived, Wormwood. Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy's will, looks around upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys. -- from The Screwtape Letters, by C. S. Lewis