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I have had the most....tireing night.

It's a youth group night. The speaker layed out a great discussion, and gave us great small group questions for our kids...which mine never got to.

tonight, my small group was a twenty minute block of 5 girls yelling about all of the questions they have that make them not believe in God.

They kept wanting answers; not even hard as stone answers, just what makes me think and act and believe the way I do--but I couldn't hold them long enough to answer one without them asking twenty more.

"Who made God?"
"Why should I be here?"
"what does it matter if I sin?"
"why do we have to go through all of this crap if all God wants is for us to be with him?"
"How do you know the bible is true? "
"IF God forgives everything, why even try?"
"What makes you believe?"
"how do you act like you do?"
"I don't understand this! I'm living a Christian life, but I don't even think God's real! "
"How can you possibly live the life you live like you do?"
"Why isn't this EASY?"
"I have never felt that God is real. "
"I feel like I'm talking to myself.
"I have had a seriously ******** up life, why isn't God doing anything about it!?!?!?!"

I hate it. my head was buzzing, not because I didn't have answers--given a bit of time, I can give them everything I believe and think and feel and have learned about it--but because I was just like them. I've been in that place of wondering why I can't just say ******** IT and live my life however I want.

I've been there. I know how I got through that, past that, to who I am today, to finding myself in Christ, and to just having a faith in Jesus.

I know the answers to their questions about sacrifice and biblical laws, and why JESUS mattered--but I can't communicate it to them.

I have been where they are with God, when all I wanted was someone to ask all of my "why" questions and get answers. Maybe not great answers, certainly not 100% this is how it is answers, but answers.

And I am SO frustrated that I can't give them what they need to hear. I'm so angry indiscrimantly and I can hardly direct my anger.

When I get in my car and scream and cry at God, I am so beyond myself, so beyond even being able to see in my 20/20 hindsight of my own life, that all I can think about is how MAD I am that I CAN'T FIX THIS.

And then God lays it on my like a ton of bricks. Even if they let me answer their questions, even if I can give them confidence in my own faith, even if I can show them every thing that led me to you-- I can't do this. Because everything, all of it, will come to nothing if they don't know they can come to God.

I'm here now because I have been where they are with God. I'm not in their particular situations, but I know that feeling of pointlessness. I can't get them out of it in one day. I can't get them out of it period.

God can.

and I need to confident that God can use me as a tool towards that end--but I am not that solution. I can't expect the fact that I've been where they are to help them walk the journey out so quickly. I have to trust God. and it is hard, because I am trusting him with more than just myself and my life.

I'm still frustrated. But I'm so thankful that I have an Abba that I can scream and cry at and just get ANGRY with who will still love me, and still genuinely, lovingly, lead me to where I can understand what is going on. I'm thankful that this frustrates me, because it means I care. It means I will put effort into this, it means that I really love these girls.

It's a good thing that I can be moved to tears by struggles of another. It means I'm not hard. It means in spite of everything, That I can see a bit of God's enourmous heart for people.

I'm still frustrated--but it's a good kind of frustrated. I'm learning. and I'm growing.

Even if it's hard.