In my final post at Examinercom, I wrote an article entitled 'When God says no'. In that article I discussed the fact that sometimes God's answer to our prayers is 'no'. We pray for years; hoping, having faith, only to find at the end of say, 15 years, that the answer to our prayer is no. That means it has been no all along. Well, that's one way of looking at the situation. Sometimes God allows negative situations in our lives because he wants to strengthen us through the situation. Sometimes negative situations happen in our lives because it is just life. In either case, we must hang on to the promise that Jesus loves us and he will not allow any more than we can bear even when it does not feel that way. I don't know about you, but I sometimes feel like the things I have gone through were grounding me to dust, not strengthening me. The fact is though, I am still here so I was not ground to dust. I do have a better understanding of how Job felt though. You trust God, you know everything you have: your family, land, and riches, are all from God, but suddenly everything is taken away. In Job's case his children are killed, his livestock is killed, he suffers financial loss, and physical debilitation. How could that be when he was living right, doing all the right things? Then to top it off, the people that he thought would be there for him were not. His wife told him to curse God and die and his friends were convinced it was something he did that caused this tragic turn of events in his life. Well, we all have a choice as to how we will react to the unexpected tragedies in our lives. I don't think God minds that we question him when we are 'going through'. In fact I believe we should keep praying, even when we do not feel like it. The last few months have been quite difficult for me and I did not really feel like talking to God about the situation, I wanted to withdraw until I could get a grip on the reality of my situation. When tragedy happens, the healing process takes time, it always does. Everyone deals with life in different ways. We should not stay away from God but instead draw closer to him. When we have suffered loss, been broken, or even ground to dust, it helps to look at other people's situations. When I think about what I have gone through I think about people, Christians, who have suffered loss as well. How have they dealt with loss? How do they live with it? I watched an interview with a scientist/doctor who talked about Oscar Pistorious, the double amputee who made it all the way to the Olympic semi-finals in track. The scientist said that 'Oscar's not broken, he is perfect.' Regardless of what we have been through, what we have lost; we are not broken, we are perfect. We need to trust that God knows what he is doing and in the meantime allow ourselves to heal. By the way, reading the book of Job will put things in perspective too.