If the title of this blog gave the impression that I have the answer to this question, I want to let you know up front that I don't. I am still in the trenches and I wrestle with this often. I wondered if someone else might too, so I decided to talk about it. Faith is such a personal journey, so I can only offer what has been my experience, and in no way do I assume others will necessarily see or feel it the same way. Maybe this conversation can validate your experience if this is an area in which you have struggled, or are still struggling. Maybe you have figured it out and can share a comment below to guide the rest of us.

After the grenade of infidelity was thrown into my lap and basically obliterated everything that mattered to me, I searched in desperation for answers. Being a Christian, that led me to look toward God for comfort and healing. I searched endlessly for relief. I read testimony after testimony from writers who spoke about the comfort they had found in God, and described feeling His love as they walked through this experience of pain and confusion. I felt neither God's comfort nor His presence. Truthfully, this left me more depressed and disconnected than before I read their words. If that was their experience, then I clearly was not doing this right, or more likely I just was not someone with the capacity to heal. Maybe God just didn't love me as much as He loved them. Maybe I was being punished (I actually lingered on that one for a very long time). Maybe this was just God's plan for my life, in which I was never going to feel any relief, but had unwillingly sacrificed my joy and peace for some kind of cosmic greater good that I couldn't see or understand.

Initially after D-day I felt desperate for God, clinging to Bible verses and pleading with Him to somehow make this NOT be my reality. He can do all things, and He could change any circumstance, so I wanted Him to just make this not be my life. As time went on, I felt angry at God. Very angry. Resentful and untrusting. How could He let this happen and then leave me here? Then, I felt totally distant and disconnected from God. As though I was giving Him the silent treatment and pretending He wasn't there. If He wasn't going to help me, then I wasn't going to talk to Him anymore. Then I felt guilty. I knew I was supposed to be faithful to God and worship him even in suffering. But I didn't see anything worthy of worship. So I obediently prayed prayers of gratitude for things like air, food, and shelter. But truthfully I didn't mean any of it. I didn't care if I ate or breathed and I really just wanted to be dead, so I wasn't grateful for the life for which I was pretending to express gratitude.

What did I hear from God? Still nothing. No lightning bolts for my disobedience and angry words, and no warm enveloping comfort for my desperate tearful pleas choked out with my face literally pressed into the floor. Nothing. Nothing at all. The silence was deafening, and I felt abandoned.

As I continued to struggle to hear from God, I often came across well-meaning "resources" trying to oversimplify an overwhelming situation and I read that I should "just" think about something else, or focus on "good things," like Phillipians 4:8. While there is merit and truth in this, there is also a time and a place. In the midst of trauma and deep depression, this just made me want to punch someone. If you saw someone's house on fire you wouldn't tell them to "think about something else." The internal "house fire" of betrayal trauma required a lot of resources and time to get me to a place where thinking about good things applied at all. It's still a day to day struggle for me, but I know as a Christian I am supposed to have faith, right? I'm not supposed to question God or be resentful or angry, and I'm supposed to trust that it's all working for the good of those who love Him. Right? Turns out it isn't that easy. At least not for me.

For a time, I didn't feel like I was supposed to say anything to God that wasn't thankful or honoring, or at the very least - polite. Early on I couldn't find any words at all. Thoughts and feelings were all jumbled up in my head, like one of those old spin art toys that twirls around and mixes up the paint colors into haphazard designs. The confusion and desperation were paralyzing, and then the anger would kick in. It felt wrong to be angry at God, but eventually I realized God already knows what I'm feeling anyway, so there was no reason to keep my thoughts from Him. He can handle my anger and disappointment. As with any human relationship with our children, we would rather have them be honest with us about being angry, than have them not talk to us at all. I'm guessing He probably looks at us like that too.

Over time, I decided that I think some aspect of hearing from God has to do with selective listening. When my kids were young, they were magically oblivious to hearing words like "homework" or "bedtime" but I could practically whisper the word "snack" from around the block - and suddenly they had hearing superpowers. I think it works kind of like that. I wanted to hear "This betrayal didn't really happen" or "I will take your pain away" or even "I will cover the AP's face with boils" - but that was not what He was going to say, and I really wasn't interested in hearing from Him about anything else.

After a while, I did "hear" from God (not audibly or literally). But the things He was showing me weren't necessarily things I could have "heard" early on. People and circumstances were placed in my path that I didn't know I needed until... I did. Over time I began to sense things that were shifting within me. Alongside the pain, I grew in perspective, compassion, forgiveness, humility, and patience... So. Much. Patience. These were not things that I necessarily wanted to learn, especially not like this, but I think they are results of the whispers and nudges of God through this season. It is still very much a work in progress, but I can see the framework now. Honestly I'd still rather hear "I'll take your pain away" or "I'll turn back the clock and it will all go away" but I don't see that happening. Sometimes I wonder if even writing these blogs is something placed by Him in my heart to offer comfort and validation to someone else who needs it right now.

It feels like I ride waves of faith. At times I feel hopeful and almost feel God's presence and see glimmers of His work in my life. At other times, all I hear from God is deafening silence and I feel very alone, unmoored and totally adrift in my pain and hopelessness, like He doesn't even see me at all. I think that is the struggle of faith. If it was easy or obvious, then it wouldn't really be faith.

Leslie Hardie, co-author of Affair Recovery's Harboring Hope course, routinely reminded participants that God helped her through her betrayal, and that He didn't love her more than He loved the rest of us. I doubted that (a lot) at the time, but I have thought of her words often since then. I am certainly not a poster child for faith in recovery, but I am real. I have real doubts and real disappointments and now, I have very real conversations with God. They are not all praise and gratitude, they are very honest. As I mentioned in a previous blog, I do genuinely feel gratitude that I couldn't fathom before, even amidst the presence of pain. So my conversations with God are a mix of those things, along with the frustration and disappointment I continue to face. It's okay. He can handle it. And I know He hears me.

In a Q&A video, Rick Reynolds responds to a person who questioned her faith as a result of her pain, and asked how a just God could have allowed the infidelity to occur. Rick's answer pointed out that Jesus was perfect. He was the Son of God and never sinned, and yet he was crucified. Many of the apostles were martyred. The point he made was that even in those circumstances, God did not prevent pain. He allowed things to happen to people who least deserved it, because he created humans to have free will to make decisions - good and bad - and we have to live with the consequences. Fairness does not factor in. We know we will have trouble in this world (John 16:33). Sometimes it is through the mistakes we make, or those of others who impact us, that changes us, makes us grow, and leads us to God to deepen our dependence on Him, which is His ultimate goal because His heart's desire is to be in true relationship with us.

I don't know how you feel about God's role in your situation, but I know I'm not alone in my struggle to understand. I don't have all the answers, but I hope sharing my thoughts might help someone feel less alone.