Why? So ... What's the Answer?

Well ... on my better days ... which may be few and far between but which God's Grace allows me from time to time ... here's my own take on "Why?"

As far as the "Why we exist?" question goes, I sure don't know the answer. The Baltimore Catechism's First Q&A comes as close to anything I know of that goes there.

As far as "Why is there suffering in the world?" there are a lot of "theodicies" written seeking to explain, or explain away, this terrifying question. But C.S. Lewis' The Problem of Pain seems to me to provide as good an answer as I'm aware of.

As far as "Why this suffering here and now?" ... in my case, "Why did my Mom die?" I think there may be a thousand answers and more, or none, but am also sure that God tends to provide me with answers and information on a "Need to know" basis. And I guess this is one of those things I really don't need to know in order to Follow Him. "What is that to thee? Follow thou me." John 21:22.

Another way to get at the same thing for me is something I once heard years ago in an Alanon meeting. Someone said, "Why? Why not?"

That may sound flippant but it wasn't meant that way, and to me really expresses some very great wisdom. Namely, it expresses to me the unassailable truth that I just plain don't know, and don't know anything like enough to know what's good for anyone at anytime. "Why? Why not?" I don't have the calculus to know whether, if Mom had stayed alive, she might have experienced such severe suffering as to lose her very faith. I don't know but what it might have simply been time for her to go. That is certainly what she thought; that is what she said, in fact, two days before she died. Would it have been better to live another week? Or year? Or decade? I don't know and don't know of any way that I could know. So why did she die on August 22? As opposed to August 30 or August 22, 2008 or August 22 2018? Well ... why not?

At another level though ... at the level of my gut ... I'll tell you why not. Because I miss her so much: I wanted her here with me. I still want her here with me. I miss her so very, very much. But even through my tears I have to admit that really my motives in this are very, very selfish. Because I don't know what's good for her. I only know what I wanted. And I wanted her here, with me.

Would that have really been best for me much less for her? Again I really don't know.

And I'm back to "Why leave Aug 22? Why not?'

This goes back to that "Grass is Greener on the Other Side" syndrome.

I'm hurting like hell and my gut says to me, "Oh God ... Oh Mom ... Oh I wish you were here."

But would that be better? I really don't have any basis at all for thinking it would really. The grass is not necessarily greener on the other side.

So why am I here alone? I don't know ... why not?

Why am I living in Tulsa, Oklahoma? And not in Nome, Alaska?

I don't know ... why not?

I mean ... suppoose I liveed in Nome, would things be better somehow? Is the grass greener on the other side of the world?

I don't know. I just plain don't know.

What I do know is that if I am to see God's Will in the Present Moment, and the Present Circumstances ... if I am to see God's Will in the Here and Now as it is, not as it "might be" ... then I think I am going to have to trust that although I sure don't have the calculus to figure out what's best, He sure does. He's omnipotent and omniscient and all-loving after all. Not just as abstract terms, but as really concrete features of Who He Is. That means that whatever is going on right here and right now is, at some level, not only His Will ... even if His Permissive Will ... but what is, in some sense, Best.

I sure as hell don't know what's Best.

But He does.

And some day ... when "all things become known" ... then perhaps I will be given to understand what's Best, and what was Best, the day Mom died.

In the meantime ... I guess all I can really do is Trust in God.

And Thank God for the Gift of Mom while she was here.

As Job says ... "The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the Name of the Lord."

Amen. Amen.

Charles Delacroix
Eve of the Feast of Ss Cosmas & Damian