If You Were Still Alive, I Might Still Believe In God

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I was never the type to get up early on Sundays to sit in a packed church. I was never the type to read the Bible in my spare time and quote scripture to my friends. But I always believed in God. I prayed to Him. I trusted Him, even when life got hard. Even when everything seemed unfair.

But the older I get, the more family and friends I’m forced to watch die, the harder it is to believe.

How could God allow so much bullshit to happen? How could He allow you to die at such a young age? How could he do that to your parents? To your siblings? To you?

And don’t say that it’s part of the plan, that it is better off this way.

A mother isn’t better off with tears in her eyes and an empty hole in her heart. A child isn’t better off without a parent there to call when they’re sick with the flu or when they need advice on how to file their taxes.

It just doesn’t make sense. I keep sitting here, waiting to find out that I heard wrong. That you’re not dead. That the hospital, that the police, that all of the witnesses who watched it happen all made a huge mistake.

I can’t wrap my head around the reason why God would take someone like you away from here.

Why would He choose to rip someone with such a bright future away and leave all the scumbags who beat their wives and leave cigarette marks on their children? Why does a scumbag who belongs locked in jail for life deserve the chance to live for decades longer than anyone wants them around — while good hearts with close friends and strong morals didn’t even get the chance to get married, to get that promotion, to graduate? Tell me why the hell that would happen.

Before you died, I believed in God without question. But now that you’re gone, I find myself questioning more and more and more. I find it difficult to keep my hope alive.

But even though I have doubts, I still pray every night.

Because I want to believe there’s a heaven holding the loved ones who have been taken away from me. I want to believe that I will see them again when my time has arrived.

I want to believe that we were thrown on this planet for a reason. I want to believe that all of those people who lived shit lives but stayed positive the whole way through will get rewarded after their deaths. I want to believe that they didn’t get ripped off.

I don’t know if I can be considered a Catholic anymore. I don’t know if I can be considered an atheist just yet. I guess I’m stuck somewhere in between, between hope and hopeless.

All I know is that I so badly want to believe in God. But I just don’t know if I do anymore.