Falling Away…Part One

By: Jason Marcle

Most of my recent posts have been about being an addict and overcoming addiction. In several of these articles, I have also mentioned that I am a work in progress. I have mentioned that my faith and prayer life are not what I would like it to be. Maybe you are struggling with the same thing. As I was studying some last night, my light bulb lit up. Over the last couple of years, I have been somewhat at God. He took away my father, then my best friend four months later, and eight months after that he took away my mother.

Remember that during all of this loss, I am still grieving the loss of Alyssa. Alyssa was like a daughter to us even though she was my first cousin’s daughter. I was also still learning how to not take a drink and remain sober. There were several other things that happened during this timeline as well. My wife, Amy, found out she was in kidney failure. My grandmother was recovering from a bad car wreck. My daughter was graduating high school and planning for college. I was recovering from a nervous breakdown. The COVID pandemic was going on as well.

With all that being said, I felt like God was turning his back on me. I attended church regularly. I served in the church by leading prayers, leading singing, serving on the Lord’s table, and other roles. I prayed often. I prayed for my father’s health. I prayed that the cancer treatments would be successful. The day my father found out he had cancer, I prayed that he would be able to see my daughter graduate high school. I prayed that COVID would not affect my family that was already immunocompromised. My dad had lung cancer, my mom had asthma, and my wife had Type I diabetes now with kidney failure. I know quite a bit about kidney failure as I am an area technical manager for a dialysis company.

Back to the light bulb that lit up. Several things were brought to my attention as I was studying forgiveness. I was read this book titled “Forgiving What You Can’t Forget.” By Lisa Terkeurst. Chapter 11 is titled “Forgiving God.” I thought to myself now that is different. I have not ever thought I needed to forgive God. He is perfect. Sin is not in his nature. But, I realized then that I had been angry with God. I feel like He has not answered my prayers. Maybe He ignored me during a time in my life when I needed him the most. I felt like God just dropped me and left me to fend for myself during these tough times. When my mother went into the hospital for COVID in 2022, I still did not feel like it would kill her. I honestly thought that there is no way God would put me through this again in such a brief time. I felt like God could give me some time to heal from my father’s passing and my best friend’s passing as he died of COVID as well.

Nope, I was wrong. My mother passed away in the hospital exactly one year and six days after my father died. I felt alone, scared, and that God had turned His back on me. There was not anybody telling me and different either. I mean, I did not have a preacher to come over and talk to me when either of my parents died. I had more people reach out to me from a former congregation than I had from our current congregation. Again, I felt like I was alone. For some reason, by reading this chapter, it was making me realize how angry and resentful I am towards God.

I have not turned my back on Him, but my faith is weak. I was not getting anything out of the sermons anymore. I felt that I was not being spiritually fed. That is why I read these kinds of books from time to time. Sometimes they show me where I am failing or point out why it is normal to feel the feelings I felt. Sometimes I have to go online and listen to sermons from a denomination that I do not necessarily agree with because I need to see and hear people get excited about loving Jesus. I need to feel the happiness that they have inside as they sing praises, as the minister is proclaiming God’s word, you can hear excitement in his voice. That is what I need.

I was angry that my local congregation was expecting me to participate in services they day after I buried my father. They expected the same the day after I buried my mother. I needed some time to reflect on what had happened. I needed to hear a sermon that would help me heal. Instead, I just went through the motions, pretending that nothing had happened. I felt like that is what was expected of me since they are already asking me to take a role in the services. I am an only child so losing both parents that quick was like taking away my whole family. I was angry that here I was trying to live right, get sober, stepping up my participation at church, and praying more frequently, and God still took my best friend and parents away from me so quickly.

I have seen a lot in my short time here on earth already. I have had a lot of experiences in life at an early age. I started seeing a counselor in early 2022 after my nervous breakdown. This was a few months after losing my best friend, Terry. I did not think I could handle anything else. I made my counselor cry on the first visit. She told me later that she cried more when she went home that evening. Then, a few months later, my mom died and my counselor was at a loss of words. She could not believe it either. I will say I could not have survived any of this had it not been for counseling. My counselor is great. I could not have gone through this alone.

Forgiving God? What a thought! I am still searching for conflict resolution with my Higher Power. I needed more empathetic communication from my church family, especially from the leadership. I needed guidance through those tough moments. I even went forward during one service and asked for help. Afterwards, they said one prayer for me, nothing else was ever mentioned. It hurt me and it weakened my faith more than anything else ever has. I lost a lot of faith in that church at the time. I have two close friends that I attended church with at the time. They did check on me, but they would have checked on me even if I did not attend church with them.

The first workday after burying my father, I called into work to let my boss know that I needed to take off a week to help my mother sort through things. I needed to go pick out a tombstone with her. She needed to take care of his social security benefits and such. She was not used to being by herself. I will never forget as long as I live how my boss responded to me. She stated, “you are setting the example for your guys. Are you going to be ok if one of your guys calls in for a week after one their parents pass away? ” I could read between the lines. I was not an idiot.

I knew by her statement that she was not happy with the idea of me taking off that whole week. She still has both of her parents, so she has no idea what I am going through no matter how much she wanted to pretend that she did. I had been off the week before staying with my father while he was in ICU. I was kind of blindsided with her response. I even had two members from our corporate office contact me and ask me why I was working. I had to tell them the truth, that I felt it was expected of me. I had plenty of PTO time saved up as well as hours in my sick leave bank. This hurt my feelings as well because I have seen others take off for a week or even longer during times like this.

I am trying to shorten this story, but still need to explain how I lost my way. I hope as I do that many of you will understand. I am still trying to find myself again. I want the relationship I had with God back. I am searching for it and working on it. There are still many things I need to correct and work on daily. I know in my heart that God did not leave me. Maybe I left him? We will discuss this further in Falling Away…Part 2.