middle-class white girl's tragedies

As promised I'm going to share my thoughts on Angry Conversations with God. It may take me a few months to get through it, not for lack of entertainment but time. In the intro, Susan shares about her faith: she grew up Lutheran and for as long as she could remember had always believed in God and that Jesus loved her. That was until she had the worst year of her life: her father died, her mom had a stroke, her career was spiraling downward, her best friends were all getting married in the same summer, and her boyfriend of three years breaks up with her. To top it off, she runs into the ex lip-locked with a new girl in Central Park. A well-meaning Christian friend, tries to console her with, "Praise God, the Lord is showing you that Jack's moved on." Susan's response: "God isn't showing me Jack moved on; God's showing me he's moved on. I feel like God has abandoned me." A month later this well-meaning friend recommends the book The Sacred Romance, explaining that "our relationship with God is nothing short of marriage." Seriously?! I'm not discounting this statement or the book but when you're in the midst of intense grief, some sappy romance book about God may not be the best solution. This is when Susan gets the bright idea to take God to couples counseling. She seeks out a Christian therapist who's willing to counsel her and her immortal, invisible husband. God would never change, but if they were in a marital relationship, there were some things he needed to know about her...primarily that she was angry.

"These were nothing but middle-class white girl's tragedies. But I was a middle-class white girl, with a middle-class white girl faith. In fact, my middle-class white girl's tragedies ceased to be the tragedy at all: the tragedy was God's response--total silence. I couldn't hear God or see God or sense God anywhere or in anything. Some people call this the Dark Night of the Soul. It was dark, all right. And silent. And I was alone." (p. 6).

And so begins her journey to find a way back to what she once knew: that God was good and Jesus loved her.