Suffering: it's what's for dinner

I feel "Ferberized" by God. For those of you who haven't had an infant in the past 15 years go here for a tutorial on Dr. Ferber's methods. In a nut shell it's the cry-it-out, I'm-not-coming-to-comfort-you method of child rearing. (Thankfully Dr. Ferber's methods are loosing popularity in the mainstream)

For months I have been crying out. But, God seems a lot like Dr. Ferber. I think he hears me but he's on the other side of the closed door and won't come into the room and pick me up and comfort me. It's very unsettling to view God as uncaring.

These feelings are more intense on Sunday's. I'm not sure why but they are. And to compound matters I express these feelings as anger. Many women cry or become depressed not me; just anger.

After attempting to change the way Mr. Johnson feels on a certain subject, I went off to binge on a box of chocolate cookies (You might guess that during this conversation things did not go my way. You'd be correct in that assumption). On the way to my cookie-coma, the book God Calling caught my eye. God kinda irks me right now because he answers all of my husbands prayers (don't let anything ever change and I'm perfectly content in all things) and ignores my prayers (Lord, help me I can't do it by myself I need change) Against my better judgement and lack of other reading materials close at hand I read the July 7 entry by complete chance and here's what it said:

PAINFUL PREPARATION
Help and Peace and Joy are here. Your courage will be rewarded.
Painful as this time is you will both one day see the reason of it, and see too that it was not cruel testing, but tender preparation for the wonderful lifework you are both to do.
Try to realize that your own prayers are being most wonderfully answered. Answered in a way that seems painful to you, but that just now is the only way.
Success in the temporal world with not satisfy you.
Great success, in both temporal and spiritual worlds, awaits you.
I know you will see this had to be.

God, I hope so. Because it sounds an awful lot like some sort of cosmic fortune cookie.

Today's topic of conversation at church was basically, Suffering: Its All You'll Ever Have.  It's the only thing that seems to be a constant fixture in our lives right now. I almost forget what life was like when I could honestly answer the question "How are you?" with an enthusiastic "GREAT"