Where is God when LIFE sucks? Or maybe this isn't the whole picture.

Its been SIX YEARS since I got that midnight phone call on August 12, 2010.  The silence and my restful slumber was slapped in the face with the words, "EMS just transported your little brother to the ER in Colorado Springs, and they tried to revive him on the way, but he's very grave...and if he's not already gone, he's not expected to live through this.  They think it was probably a brain aneurysm."  My knees were too weak to stand and I collapsed next to my bed, assuming the prayer position purely by accident, but when I saw I was in that familiar spot, found myself thinking, "what's the use?"  One more time, God has abandoned me, and my family, right when we needed Him!  What else can regular human people like us come up with in that moment.  Any kind of "God talk" whereby I might "say the right thing" or feign some kind of acceptance would be wholly disingenious and, in my opinion, while still welcomed by the God I have come to know today, it isn't the choice of behavior that serves me best in this moment.  So, yes, that one hurt BAD, and in some ways, I've learned in six years that you never completely get over a loss like that.  For God's sake, I named this baby brother when I was 10 years old out of my anxious anticipation of his arrival!  Why they let me, I'll never know.  But now he's GONE and every time I think of a reason to call him, he's not there. There will be a vacuous hole in my family as long as we are on the Earth without our Bart here with us, making us laugh, raising his three boys, loving his Suzi, and showing us the way our God showed us to walk this Earth.  That is human and only a love that deep and wide could stretch our hearts to contain such grief.  

I could go on with more grief and pain, but I think, no I KNOW you understand.  You've told me over and over and I thank you vociferously from the bottom of this big brother's heart. But I must share with you something I heard from a good friend on top of a mountain in Colorado about a month ago. He said (after losing three friends to Cancer in a matter of  months);

"So, I had a choice about how to view this, even though I didn't have a choice about how I felt in that moment.  I said to myself, if THIS is how God is, then God isn't the kind of God I want in my life!" In fact, I think he said "He sucks!"  And then he paused for a moment.  Then he said something that landed in my heart with a bittersweet thud:

"Either God sucks or THIS ISN'T THE WHOLE PICTURE." 

Whaaaaaa???  I had one of those palm to forehead moments. WHAM!) What. If. This. Isn't. The.Whole. Picture?  I repeated to myself several times.  I don't know what else he said, but that was a bell ringer for me.  Of COURSE this isn't the whole picture.  We've proclaimed for a lifetime that "we don't grieve as those who have no hope",  but have I believed it?  Have I practiced it in my heart of hearts?  Do I really let the Spirit communicate that to me by slowing down enough, and listening for that still, small voice, letting go of my old ideas enough, or let my ego be smashed enough to be totally vulnerable and teachable?!!  Am I learning, as Veronica A. Shofstall entreats, "to accept my defeats with my head held high with the grace of an adult and not the grief of a child?" I've missed His voice.  Yeah, Bart's too, but I mean His still, small voice.  I'm afraid I have modeled for many of you this picture of a guy who SAYS he believes in an afterlife, who subscribes to the truth that THIS world isn't all there is.  But when I have grieved a loss, haven't I instead accepted a watered down version that says, "Yes, I'll get to that kind of strength and courage someday, but for today, the world I live in gives me the RIGHT to believe and practice anything I want because "I'm GRIEVING!"  Yes, it is human.  Yes, I have cried a bucket of tears since losing my little brother and some of those other losses I mentioned.  But what about the faith part where I model this belief that "THIS ISN'T THE WHOLE PICTURE!"  Maybe it just 'takes what it takes', as we say often in recovery when one of us is beating himself up for how long it took him to see the light and find recovery.  I hope you'll forgive me for the times I have forgotten who I am...or Whose I am...and instead, have acted out of human selfishness and simply taken the "free pass" of acting out any way I want "because people give me that pass in our culture".  And so instead of leading people into a SPIRITUAL version of "Loss and Grief" that highlights the reality that 'this isn't the whole picture", I fall back on the caveat...one more time.   What if?  What if we received death in the way the Tibetans teach us - moving more swiftly to willingness and acceptance?  What if we learned to accept it with our head held high - even through our tears - with the grace of an adult and not the grief of a child?

What if?